Horace Mann 



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THE 
MOST DISTINGUISHED EDUCATIONAL CONTEMPORARY 

OF 

HORACE MANN, 

AXD THE 

MOST EMINENT LIVING EDUCATOR, THIS TRIBUTE TO 

MR. MANN IS AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED BY THE 

AUTHOR. 



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HORACE MANN 



The Educator. 



By ALBERT E. WINSHIP. 



BOSTON: 

New England Publishing Co. 

1896. 



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Copyrighted 1896. 

NEW ENGLAND PUBLISHING CO., 

Bostqn, Mass. 



PREFACE. 

Great men are rare. Mute, inglorious Miltons may be 
numerous, but greatness, as the world views it, must be 
judged from the way in which emergencies are met. 
Horace Mann was a great educator because he met a 
great educational emergency. 

With some characters greatness is linked to a single 
event. Columbus discovered America, Wellington de- 
feated Napoleon at Waterloo, Perry wrote, " We met the 
enemy and they are ours." With others it is an inher- 
ited reputation of which few have any definite estimate 
as to the merit of the popular verdict. Walpole and 
Pitt in England, John Hancock and Charles Sumner in 
America are securely anchored in the public mind though 
few can give a reason for the admiration that is in them. 
Horace Mann's reputation is largely of the latter class. 
His name is a household word among teachers and yet 
few can tell aught of the man or of his work. 

The one hundredth anniversary of his birth (May 4, 
1896) should make this entire year a memorial season so 
far as to give every teacher and every school acquaint- 
ance with the essential features of his character and with 
the leading characteristics of his work. 

There is one great monument to this leader in the 
" Life and Works of Horace Mann," in five volumes 
edited by his widow and published by Lee & Shepard, 
Boston. Without these volumes comparatively little 
could now be written of his life. His correspondence 
was voluminous and confidential, giving details regard- 
ing his contests and he was one of the few men fortunate 
enough to keep a good diary. The correspondence and 
the diary were both available when Mrs. Mann wrote 
this " Life," and for the service here rendered the edu- 
cational public owes her a debt of gratitude. These vol- 
umes also contain his reports and addresses. Unfortu- 
nately many who would gladly know of Horace Mann 
cannot afford to buy the five volumes, and many will re- 



ii PREFACE. 

gret that they do not contain the great controversy with 
the " Thirty-one Boston Masters." An inexpensive 
book upon " Horace Mann, the Educator " should cer- 
tainly be available. 

The author would acknowledge his indebtedness to 
the " Life and Works " by Mrs. Mann. No apology 
is made for the absence of reference footnotes — since no 
claim is entered to skill in " the laboratory method in his- 
tory," nor for the absence of a literary or historical style 
which requires the pruning and polishing of sentences; 
nor for the unusual freedom in the expression of opinion. 
The facts are closely verified, the winnowing has been 
done with some care, whatever bears no relation to his 
educational service being eliminated. Beyond that the 
thought has been to give the author's view of the man, 
his work and his times in a condensed and readable 
form, with convictions rather than pretensions. 



CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER 

I — A Great Educator . . ■ 
II — At Home and at School 
III — Law and Legislature . . ^ 
IY — Educational Champion 
V — As He Found It . 
VI — The Normal Schools . 
VII — Opposition .... 
VIII — Mr. Mann's Reports 
IX — The Famous Seventh Report 
X — " Remarks " of the Masters 
XI— " Reply " to " Remarks " . 
XII — " Rejoinder " to the " Reply " 

XIII — The " Answer " and the Crisis 

XIV — The Statesman 
XV — At Antioch College 

XVI — A-B-C in the Controversy . 



PAGE 
1 
4 
9 
14 
21 
28 
37 
41 
50 
55 
62 
68 
72 
77 
79 
82 



CHAPTER I. 

A GREAT EDUCATOR. 

By universal consent Horace Mann is the edu- 
cator of the century. His is the name to conjure 
with in the forests of Michigan or the everglades 
of Florida, in the council of London or with the 
ministry of Prussia. People in school and out 
know that Washington is the father of his coun- 
try, Lincoln the savior of the Union, Franklin the 
revealer of electricity, Webster the orator, and 
Horace Mann the educator. But, alas, they do 
not know much about this educator or his work. 
The most prominent statue in Boston, placed by 
the Commonwealth in front of the state house is 
an imposing bronze figure of Horace Mann. His 
twelve reports to the State Board of Education are 
the rarest and most valuable educational works 
in our language. 

Hon. Anson P. Burlingame was a visitor at a 
session of the London city council when an edu- 
cational appropriation was voted down by a de- 
cided majority. Then a member arose and read 
extracts from one of the reports of Horace Mann 
whereupon the city council of London reconsid- 
ered its action and made the appropriation. 
Such was the influence of Horace Mann in foreign 
parts. 

After his retirement from office, business men 
of Boston presented him with a purse of two thou- 
sand dollars as a slight token of their appreciation 
of the service he had rendered the cause of educa- 
tion. 

Why should one man, in no adequate sense a 



2 HORACE MANN, 

teacher or a philosopher, no single sentence of 
whose writings lives as the keynote to his service 
or wisdom, be singled out to carry the honor and 
exert the educational influence of the century 
in American life? It is easier to ask this question 
than to answer it. No one has yet analyzed that 
strain in human nature by which Washington 
carries in his name the honor and glory of the he- 
roic generals, statesmen and patriots of the Kev- 
olution, or Grant the generalship of the Civil War 
or John Brown the abolition enthusiasm of his 
time. There are aLways many men who con- 
tribute to the success of any great cause, and 
some one among them receives the honor won by 
all. In that great educational contest out of 
which the normal schools were born and the 
common school system of Massachusetts devel- 
oped, Cyrus Pierce was the great teacher, Ed- 
mund Dwight the organizer of the State Board 
of Education, and the founder of the normal 
schools through his gift of f 10,000, but the devo- 
tion of Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, and 
Samuel J. May, the benefactions of Edmund 
Dwight and Josiah Quincy, and the administra- 
tive wisdom of Barnas Sears and George S. Bout- 
well are all merged in the name of Horace Mann. 
This could not be changed if we would. Who 
would change it if he could? 

There must be some reason for this trait in 
human nature. There must have been some- 
thing in the personality or experience of Mr. Mann 
to give him such distinction. It is safe to say 
that no teacher could have won such laurels, nor 
could he have earned his permanent distinction 
merely as secretary of the Board of Education. 
While he did not owe his reputation to his elo- 
quence, literary brilliancy, professional training, 
statesmanship, religious conviction, temperance 
zeal, abolition enthusiasm, or personal friend- 



THE EDUCATOR. 3 

ships, he could not have been what he was with 
any of these factors omitted. 

It is customary for the uninformed to attribute 
Mr. Mann's eminence to the fact that he sacrificed 
brilliant professional and political prospects to 
devote himself to the cause of education, and to 
consider this honor the due reward of such 
sacrifice. This is only partly true. He was a 
Boston lawyer and president of the Massachu- 
setts Senate when he accepted the secretaryship 
of the Board of Education at a salaiw of $1,500 a 
year; but there was no prospect of immediate 
political advancement for him, and for the last 
three years of his practice he had slept in his little 
law office, and more than one-half the days found 
him without sufficient money to buy even a 
meagre luncheon. This last fact was due partly 
to his light income, but more to the heavy in- 
debtedness incurred by indorsing for a brother, 
whose financial failure placed heavy burdens 
upon him. Again, he had every reason to sup- 
pose that the salary would be $2,500 the first year 
and rise to $3,000. There were greater sacrifices 
than he anticipated.- The opportunity developed 
elements of character, brilliant talents of voice 
and pen, intensified the friendships of such men 
as Josiah Quincy, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, 
Edward Everett, and Theodore Parker, and ulti- 
mately won for him such personal and political 
popularity as to give him the seat in Congress 
when John Quincy Adams fell in his place in the 
National House of Representatives, and enabled 
him to secure reelection against the most tyranni- 
cal dictation of Daniel Webster and the entire 
political management at his command. 

If I may be allowed to put in a single phrase 
my estimate of the characteristics that made Mr. 
Mann an educational leader I would say it was 
his power to make and command a crisis. 



CHAPTER 11. 

AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 

On March 2, 1778, an exceptionally intelligent 
village in Southern Massachusetts was incorpo- 
rated as a town and was named after that 
great genius and statesman, Benjamin Franklin. 
Some enterprising citizen sent word to Mr. Frank- 
lin that it would give great satisfaction to the peo- 
ple if he would present to the town a bell for the 
church, in appreciation of the honor. Mr. Franklin 
said that he hoped a people who would name atown 
for him would have more regard for "sense than 
sound" and he preferred to give them a public 
library of five hundred volumes. Eighteen years 
later, May 4, 1796, Horace Mann was born in a 
humble farmhouse, and that library of Franklin's 
was the chief factor in giving the world the 
studious, scholarly, .devoted, aggressive educa- 
tional leader of America. 

Until nearly twenty years of age he never went 
to school more than a few weeks in midwinter, 
and then to instructors who were "very good peo- 
ple but very poor teachers." The town did not 
then furnish "free text-books" and the lad 
worked many a half-day braiding straw for hats 
to get the money to buy spelling-book, arithmetic 
and reader. His father died when he was but 
thirteen and the boy worked thereafter for the 
support of the family. 

When nearly twenty he came to know an inspir- 
ing classical teacher who convinced him that a 
college course was possible, and within six 
months from the time he first saw a Latin gram- 



THE EDUCATOR. ■ 5 

mar he was admitted to the sophomore class of 
Brown University. It was such a six months of 
study as has rarely been known in America, and 
it broke his health for life. Nor was this the only 
evidence of the scholastic strength and brilliancy 
of Horace Mann. Although he entered the class 
with no adequate preparation and no literary 
culture, with all the traditional prejudices 
against the "short cut" students and those uncul- 
tured, he soon led his class and graduated far in 
advance of any other student. Upon graduating 
at the age of twenty-three, he remained at Brown 
as an instructor in Greek and Latin for three 
years. During his college years he taught coun- 
try schools a few weeks each winter. 

Through life, Horace Mann was inclined to 
refer to the trials and denials of his boyhood, to 
the poor teaching and lack of opportunities as 
great misfortunes, causing irreparable loss; but it 
is an open question whether he did not owe more 
to the first twenty years of his life in which there 
was developed hunger for knowledge, craving for 
opportunity which necessitated his reading his- 
tories and other works adapted to men rather 
than children, listening to such mighty sermons 
as only an Emmons of that day could preach, — 
thinking upon and rebelling against them all the 
week, — than he could have owed to any method 
of instruction that would have monopolized his 
thought or, rather, have diverted his mind to 
books or even to nature through these years. 

From the day he entered college, he never had 
an hour for his mind to lie fallow. Speaking of 
these years he said, — "Yet with these obstruc- 
tions, I had a love of knowledge which nothing- 
could repress. An inward voice raised its plaint 
forever in my heart for something nobler and 
better; and if my parents had not the means to 
give me knowledge, they intensified the love of it. 



G HOB ACE MANN, 

They always spoke of learning and learned men 
with enthusiasm and a kind of reverence. I was 
taught to take care of the few books we had, as 
though there was something sacred about them. 
I never dog-eared one in my life, nor profanely 
scribbled upon title-pages, margin, or fly-leaf; and 
would as soon have stuck a pin through my flesh 
as through the pages of a book." 

All this denial and his life with his mother pro- 
duced a character of which any man might well 
be proud. "I have always been exempt from 
what may be called common vices. I was never 
intoxicated in my life; unless, perchance, with joy 
or anger. I never swore; indeed, profanity was 
always most disgusting and repulsive to me. And 
(I consider it almost a climax) I never used the 
'vile weed' in any form. I early formed the reso- 
lution to be a slave to no habit." Speaking in 
later life of his youthful longing for more educa- 
tion, he said, — "I know not how it was; its motive 
never took the form of wealth or fame. It was 
rather an instinct which impelled towards knowl- 
edge, as that of migratory birds impels them 
northward in springtime. All my boyish castles 
in the air had reference to doing something for 
the benefit of mankind. The early precepts of 
benevolence, inculcated upon me by my parents, 
flowed out in this direction; and I had a convic- 
tion that knowledge was my needed instrument/' 

Keferring to his financial limitations in college, 
he wrote his sister at the time, — "If the children 
of Israel were pressed for 'gear' half so hard as 
I have been, I do not wonder they were willing to 
worship a golden calf. It is a long time since my 
last ninepence bade good-by to its brethren ; and 
I suspect the last two parted on no very friendly 
terms, for they have never since met together. 
Poor wretches! never did two souls stand in 
greater need of mutual support and consolation.'' 



THE EDUCATOR. 7 

No study of the life of Horace Mann would be 
complete that left out his tribute to his mother, 
for whom he worked and with whom he lived so 
incessantly after the death of his father. "Prin- 
ciple, duty, gratitude, affection, have bound me 
so closely to that parent whom alone Heaven 
has spared me, that she seems to me rather a por- 
tion Of my own existence than a separate and 
independent being. I can conceive no emotions 
more pure, more holy, more like those which glow 
in the bosom of a perfected being, than those 
which a virtuous son must feel towards an affec- 
tionate mother. She has little means of render- 
ing him assistance in his projects of aggrandize- 
ment, or in the walks of ambition; so that his 
feelings are uncontaminated with any of those 
earth-born passions that sometimes mingle their 
alloy with his other attachments. How different 
is the regard which springs from benefits which 
we hope hereafter to enjoy, from that which arises 
from services rendered and kindnesses bestowed 
even before we were capable of knowing their 
value! It is this higher sentiment that a mother 
challenges in a son. For myself, I can truly say 
that the strongest and most abiding incentive 
to excellence by which I was ever animated, 
sprang from that look of solicitude and hope, that 
heavenly expression of maternal tenderness, 
when, without the utterance of a single word, my 
mother has looked into my face, and silently told 
me that my life was freighted with a two-fold 
being, for it bore her destiny as well as my own. 
And as truly can I say that the most exquisite 
delight that ever thrilled me was, when some 
flattering rumor of myself had found its way to 
her ear, to mark her readier smile, her lighter 
step, her disproportionate encomiums on things 
of trivial value, when I was secretly conscious 
that her altered mien was caused bv the fountains 



g HORACE MANN, 

of pleasure that were pouring their sweet waters 
over her heart." 

Mr. Mann's theme for his valedictory at gradua- 
tion was "The Progressive Character of the Hu : 
man Race." This was really the one theme upon 
which he wrote and thought and talked through 
life. At the age of twenty-five, he entered the law 
school at Litchfield, Conn. One of his mates at 
the law school has described him as a youug man 
with massive brow, high arching head, and mild 
bright eye. He ranked as the best whist player 
and the best lawyer in the institution. His train- 
ing for his profession fitted him for a life of mis- 
cellaneous usefulness and occasional brilliancy 
rather than for that of a plodding lawyer, for 
devotion to humanity rather than to professional 
aspiration. 

Ten years of legislative life must demoralize 
the professional practice of any thoroughly con- 
scientious and honorable man. Legislative ex- 
perience to be of professional advantage must 
be associated with the business side of the legis- 
lation rather than the philanthropic. Mr. Mann's 
legislative tastes, convictions and associations 
were better adapted to make him useful to hu- 
manity than financially successful as a lawyer. 



CHAPTER III. 

LAW AND LEGISLATURE. 

At the age of twenty-seven, Mr, Mann was ad- 
mitted to the bar and began practice in Dedham. 
While never a great success financially, the court 
records show that he won four out of five of the 
cases that he tried. It was a financial misfor- 
tune that he would never try a case in which he 
did not believe that he was in the right. He 
fully appreciated that a man will pay a much 
larger sum to have a wrong cause advocated than 
a right, and that it lessens the popularity of an 
attorney to be thought good rather than smart, 
to care more for being right than for winning. 
In the fourteen years, he seems never to have had 
a case that brought him large returns or high 
honors, but his record for winning his cases has 
few parallels. He held that an advocate loses 
his highest power when he loses the ever-con- 
scious conviction that he is contending for the 
truth; that though the fees or fame may be a 
stimulus, yet that a conviction of being right is 
itself creative of power, and renders its possessor 
more than a match for antagonists otherwise 
greatly his superiors. He used to say that in his 
conscious conviction of right there was a magnet- 
ism ; and he only wanted an opportunity to be put 
in communication with a jury in order to impreg- 
nate them with his own belief. Beyond this, his 
aim always was, before leaving any head or topic 
in his argument, to condense its whole force into a 
vivid epigrammatic point, which the jury could 
not help remembering when they got into the 



10 HORACE MANN, 

jury-room; and, by graphic illustration and simile, 
to fasten pictures upon their minds, which they 
would retain and reproduce after abstruse argu- 
ments were forgotten. He endeavored to give to 
each one of the jurors something to be "quoted" 
on his side, when they retired for consultation. 
He argued his cases as though he was in the jury- 
room itself, taking part in the deliberations that 
were to be held there. From the confidence in his 
honesty, and those pictures with which he filled 
the air of the jury-room, came his uncommon suc- 
cess. The fourth year in Dedham he was elected 
to the Legislature, and his first speech was one of 
those masterly efforts which establish a repu- 
tation that endures. 

Most of the misfortune that came to Mr. Mann 
in public life was associated directly or indirectly 
with his religious views. The mighty preaching 
of Doctor Emmons turned him, as a youth, against 
the evangelical faith, and inspired a purpose to 
champion liberality of thought on every occas- 
sion. 

His first legislative honors were won, in 1827, 
in his great speech in defence of religious liberty 
in opposition to a scheme by which close corpora- 
tions could secure the income of certain property 
forever to the support of particular creeds. From 
that hour he was again and again bitterly antag- 
onized by the evangelical press and leaders, while 
at the same time he was unable to retain the un- 
wavering support of those whom he championed. 

His last days were saddened beyond descrip- 
tion by a cruel sentence written by Theodore 
Parker, one of his best friends, in which he ex- 
pressed regret at Mr. Mann's religious attitude 
at Antioch College, saying that he regretted that 
Mr. Mann had forgotten that in religion as in 
mathematics a straight line is the shortest dis- 
tance between two points. 



TEE EDUCATOR. H 

The town of Dedhani did him the honor to send 
him to the Legislature for six successive years, 
as long indeed as he lived in that town. At the 
age of thirty-seven (1833) he moved to Boston, and 
the same year that senatorial district honored 
him, as few have been honored in political life, by 
sending him immediately to the State Senate, 
where he remained four years, the last two years 
as president of that body. 

During his legislative life he gave much atten- 
tion to philanthropic matters, especially to those 
connected with the care of the defective classes. 
To him was largely due the establishment of the 
Worcester Lunatic Asylum. He was one of the 
most ardent champions in the cause of the deaf 
and dumb. While engaged in efforts to amelio- 
rate the condition of the unfortunate classes he 
became convinced that the greatest need in Amer- 
ica was the better education of all children and 
youth; and he became the legislative champion 
of the plans of Edmund Dwight. James G. Carter 
and Robert Rantoul, Jr., for the establishment of 
a Board of Education. 

During his college course he became much at- 
tached to the young daughter of Doctor Messer 
in whose family he lived, and ten years later, 
while he was practising law in Dedham, she 
became his wife. Speaking of her an intimate 
friend said, "When I knew his wife personally 
(I had long known her through him) I was indeed 
rejoiced that such an angelic being had been 
created to be his comfort, solace, joy and happi- 
ness. She was extremely delicate in health, and 
called forth the tenderest care. This fostering, 
protecting, caressing care, she had, of course, in 
perfection." 

Their life together was brief, and when she 
died, it seemed as though there was for him no 
consolation. He describes his emotions as no 



12 HORACE MANN, 

one else could do: "Amid the current of conversa- 
tion, in social intercourse or the avocations of 
business, in the daily walk of life, it is never but 
half forgotten; and the sight of an object,, the 
utterance of a word, the tone of a voice, re-opens 
upon me the mournful scene, and spreads around 
me with electric quickness, a world of gloom. 
During that period, when, for me, there was a 
light upon earth brighter than any light of the 
sun, and a voice sweeter than any of Nature's 
harmonies, I did not think but that the happiness 
which was boundless in present enjoyment would 
be perpetual in duration. Do not blame my 
ungrateful heart for not looking beyond the boon 
with which Heaven had blessed me; for you know 
not the potency of that enchantment. My life 
went out of myself. One after another, the feel- 
ings which had before been fastened upon other 
objects loosened their strong grasp, and went to 
dwell in the sanctuary of her holy and beautiful 
nature. Ambition forgot the applause of the 
world for the more precious gratulations of that 
approving voice, Joy ceased its quests abroad; 
for at home there was an exhaustless fountain 
to slake its renewing thirst. There imagination 
built her palaces, and garnered her choicest treas- 
ures. She too supplied me with new strength for 
toil and new motives for excellence. Within her 
influence, there could be no contest for sordid 
passions or degrading appetites; for she sent a 
divine and overmastering strength into every 
generous sentiment, which I cannot describe. 
She purified my conceptions of purity, and beauti- 
fied the ideal of every excellence. I never knew 
her to express a selfish or an envious thought; 
nor do I believe that the type of one was ever 
admitted to disturb the peacefulness of her bosom. 
Yet, in the passionate love she inspired, there was 
nothing of oblivion of the rest of mankind. Her 



THE EDUCATOR. 13 

teachings did not make one love others less, but 
differently, more aboundingly. Her sympathy 
with other's pain seemed to be quicker and 
stronger than the sensation of her own; and with 
a sensibility that would sigh at a crushed flower, 
there was a spirit of endurance that would up- 
hold a martyr. There was in her breast no scorn 
of vice, but a wonder and amazement that it could 
exist. To her it seemed almost a mystery; and 
though she comprehended its deformity, it was 
more in pity than in indignation that she regarded 
it: but that hallowed joy with which she contem- 
plated whatever tended to ameliorate the condi- 
tion of mankind, to save them from pain or rescue 
them from guilt, was, in its manifestations, more 
like a vision from a brighter world, a divine illu- 
mination, than like the earthly sentiment of hu- 
manity." It was this affliction and the sadness 
with which it shrouded his life that led his friends 
to insist that he leave Dedham and take up life 
anew in Boston. There are few more heartrending 
scenes in life than the picture of this man leaving 
such a home and living in practical poverty, sleep- 
ing in his law office, the only person in the build- 
ing, and, as he said, going without luncheon half 
the time because he could not afford the indul- 
gence. There is very little satisfaction in the 
thought that one of the causes of this denial was 
the misfortune of a brother for whose debts he 
had become responsible. All these conditions 
made it easy for him to be tempted from law to 
semi-official life as secretary of the State Board 
of Education. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

EDUCATIONAL CHAMPION. 

The cause of education might never have had 
Horace Mann as its great champion but for this 
combination of circumstances, — financial embar- 
rassment, the absence of the cheer, the comforts 
and the necessities of home, and the bringing to 
a close of a legislative career of ten years. While 
he did not seek the secretaryship of the Board of 
Education, it was brought to his attention at a 
time when he must practically reenter upon the 
practice of law, which had for him very little 
attraction. He enjoyed individual cases but not 
the practice of law in the abstract. Writing on 
June 19, 1837, the very time that Edmund Dwight 
was urging upon him the consideration of the 
secretaryship, Mr. Mann said: "Employed the 
whole day in looking up a technical question of 
law. I have not, therefore, had anything in my 
head but technical combinations of technicalities. 
This part of the law has a strong tendency to 
make the mind nearsighted. What Coleridge 
says generally, and very untruly, of the law may 
be just when applied solely to this part of it, — 
that its operation upon the mind is like that of 
a grindstone upon a knife; it narrows while it 
sharpens. And is it not true that every object 
of science, however grand or elevated, has its 
atoms, its minute and subtle divisions and dis- 
criminations? The degrees of longitude upon 
the earth's surface, the zones into which the globe 
has been divided, and their corresponding lines 
and compartments in the heavens, would show 
pretty well in the registry for county deeds; but 



THE EDUCATOR. 15 

yet, in surveying and affixing the bounds and 
limits to these vast tracts of space, what minute 
calculations must the geographer and astronomer 
make! what fractions, what decimals, what in- 
finitesimals! So the natural philosopher, whose 
patrimony, bequeathed to him by science, is con- 
tinents and oceans and suns, must deal also with 
globules and animalculse, and points vanishing 
into nothingness. Who can have more subtle 
questions to settle than the casuist or the meta- 
physician? So of all. In one direction we lose 
everything in magnificence, in vastness, in infin- 
ity; in the other direction we are equally lost in 
attempting to trace to their elements those sub- 
stances, whatever they are, whose aggregate is 
earth, ocean, air, sky, immensity. Those who 
see nothing in the law but technicalities, apices, 
and summa jura, are about as wise as the child 
who mistook the infinite host of the stars for brass 
nails that fastened up the earth's ceiling." The 
next day he wrote : ''Another day in search of the 
technical rules of law. If the whole professional 
business of a lawyer consisted only in investigat- 
ing and determining technical rules, one might 
almost be excused for attempting to reach justice 
summarily through the instrumentality of that 
monster, a mob. Those who only have to pay 
for technical law are comparatively fortunate; 
but this effort for two days in succession to keep 
the eye fixed on the edge of a razor is apt to make 
one a little nervous." 

Although he always tried to find satisfaction 
in the general advantages of law it was easy to see 
to what extent it bored him at the very time when 
Mr. Dwight was urging him to accept the secre- 
taryship of the Board. It ought in fairness to be 
said that whenever he had a case it absorbed all 
his thought and energy for the time being. He 
had this to say at one time regarding the intensity 



IQ HORACE MANN, 

of his devotion to every case that he had in hand : 
"The truth is that hearing common sermons, 
gives my piety the consumption. Ministers seem 
to me not to care half so much about the salva- 
tion of mankind as I do about a justice's case. 
When I have a case before a justice of the peace 
I can't help thinking of it beforehand, and per- 
haps feeling grieved too, afterward, if in any 
respect I might have conducted it better. If 1 
am at dinner, the merriment or the philosophy of 
the table-talk suggests something, which I put 
away into a pigeon-hole in my mind for the case; 
and when I read, be it poetry or prose, the case 
hangs over the page like a magnet, and attracts 
to itself whatever seems to be pertinent or appli- 
cable. Success or failure leaves a bright or a 
dark hue on my mind, often for days." 

The attractions of his profession lessened as 
the temptation to the secretaryship increased. 
Mr. Mann inclined to accept the position on the 
ground of adaptability to his taste and desires 
before he could bring himself to admit that he 
was equal to its responsibilities. In his personal 
diary, intended for no eyes but his own, he wrote : 
"Ought I to think of filling this high and respon- 
sible office? Can I adequately perform its duties? 
Will my greater zeal in^ the cause than that of 
others supply the deficiency in point of talent and 
information? Whoever shall undertake that task 
must encounter privation, labor, and an infinite 
annoyance from an infinite number of schemers. 
He must condense the steam of enthusiasts, and 
soften the rock of the incredulous. What toil in 
arriving at a true system himself! what toil in 
infusing that system into the minds of others! 
How many dead minds to be resuscitated! how 
many prurient ones to be soothed! How much of 
mingled truth and error to be decompounded and 
analyzed! What a spirit of perseverance would 



THE EDUCATOR. 17 

be needed to sustain him all the way between the 
inception and the accomplishment of his objects! 
But should he succeed; should he bring forth the 
germs of greatness and of happiness which na- 
ture has scattered abroad, and expand them into 
maturity, and enrich them with fruit; should he 
be able to teach, to even a few of this generation, 
how mind is a god over matter; how in arranging 
objects of desire, a subordination of the less valu- 
able to the more is the great secret of individual 
happiness; how the whole of life depends upon 
the scale which we form of its relative values, — 
could he do this, what diffusion, what intensity, 
what perpetuity of blessings he would confer! 
How would his beneficial influence upon man- 
kind widen and deepen as it descended forever ! 

"I cannot think of that station as regards my- 
self without feeling both hopes and fears, desires 
and apprehensions, multiplying in my mind, — so 
glorious a sphere, should it be crowned with 
success; so heavy with disappointment and humil- 
iation, should it fail through any avoidable mis- 
fortune. What a thought, to have the future 
minds of such multitudes dependent in any per- 
ceptible degree upon one's own exertions! It is 
such a thought as must mightily energize or 
totally overpower any mind that can adequately 
comprehend it." 

On May 27, 1837, the governor appointed eight 
gentlemen as the Board of Education. Mr. Mann 
was one of these. He believed this Board to be 
like a spring almost imperceptible, flowing from 
the highest tableland between oceans, destined to 
deepen and widen as it descended, diffusing 
health and beauty in its course till nations shall 
dwell upon its banks. He regarded this as the 
first great movement towards an organized sys- 
tem of common school education, which should be 
at once thorough and universal. 



18 HORACE MANN, 

At this time he said, — "I would much sooner 
surrender a portion of the territory of the com- 
monwealth to an ambitious and aggressive neigh- 
bor than I would surrender the minds of its chil- 
dren to the domain of ignorance." 

On June 29, 1837, he was elected secretary of 
the Board of Education. Of the position and his 
relation to it, he says: "Few undertakings ac- 
cording to my appreciation of it have been 
greater. I know of none which may be more 
fruitful in beneficent results. God grant me an 
annihilation of selfishness, a mind of wisdom, a 
heart of benevolence! How many men I shall 
meet who are accessible only through a single mo- 
tive, or who are incased in prejudice and jealousy, 
and need, not to be subdued but to be remodeled! 
how many who will vociferate their devotion to 
the public, but whose thoughts will be intent on 
themselves! There is but one spirit in which 
these impediments can be met with success: it is 
the spirit of self-abandonment, the spirit of mar- 
tyrdom. To this I believe there are but few, of all 
who wear the form of humanity, who will not 
yield. I must not irritate, I must not humble, I 
must not degrade anyone in his own eyes. I 
must not present myself as a solid body to oppose 
an iron barrier to any. I must be a fluid sort of a 
man, adapting myself to tastes, opinions, habits, 
manners, so far as this can be done without hy- 
pocrisy or insincerity, or a compromise of princi- 
ple. In all this there must be a higher object 
than to win personal esteem, or favor, or worldly 
applause. A new fountain may now be opened. 
Let me strive to direct its current in such a man- 
ner, that if, when I have departed from life, T 
may still be permitted to witness its course, I 
may behold it broadening and deepening in an 
everlasting progression of virtue and happiness. 

"Henceforth, so long as I hold this office, I 



THE EDUCATOR. 19 

devote myself to the supremest welfare of man- 
kind upon earth. An inconceivably greater labor 
is undertaken. With the highest degree of pros- 
perity, results will manifest themselves but 
slowly. The harvest is far distant from the seed- 
time. Faith is the only sustainer. I have faith 
in the unprovability of the race, — in their acceler- 
ating improvability. This effort may do appar- 
ently but little. But mere beginning in a good 
cause is never little. If we can get this vast 
wheel into any perceptible motion, we shall have 
accomplished much. And more and higher quali- 
ties than mere labor and perseverance will be 
requisite. Art for applying will be no less neces- 
sary than science for combining and deducing. 
No object ever gave scope for higher powers, or 
exacted a more careful, sagacious use of them. 
At first, it will be better to err on the side of 
caution than of boldness. When walking over 
quagmires, we should never venture long steps. 
However, after all the advice which all the sages 
who ever lived could give there is no such security 
against danger, and in favor of success, as to 
undertake it with a right spirit, — with a self- 
sacrificing spirit. Men can resist the influence 
of talent; they will deny demonstration, if need 
be; but few will combat goodness for any length 
of time. A spirit mildly devoting itself to a good 
cause is a certain conqueror. Love is a universal 
solvent. Wilfulness will maintain itself against 
persecution, torture, death, but will be fused and 
dissipated by any kindness, forbearance, sym- 
pathy. Here is a clew given by God to lead us 
through the labyrinth of the world." 

Mr. Mann gave up the practice of law with no 
apparent regrets and wrote, almost with enthu- 
siasm: "I have abandoned jurisprudence, and be- 
taken myself to the larger sphere of mind and 
morals. Having found the present generation 



20 HORACE MANN. 

composed of materials almost unmalleable, I am 
about transferring my efforts to the next. Men 
are cast-iron; but children are wax. Strength 
expended upon the latter may be effectual, which 
would make no impression upon the former." 

"Let the next generation be my client," was 
his call to duty as he turned from the courts to 
the schools. 

The spirit with which he entered upon this 
work can have no better illustration than the 
reply made to his friends who thought that the 
office should have some better title than "secre- 
tary of the Board of Education," "If the title is 
not sufficiently honorable now, then it is clearly 
left for me to elevate it; and I would rather be 
creditor than debtor to the title." 



CHAPTER V. 

AS HE FOUND IT. 

It was a great task upon which Mr. Mann 
entered when he became secretary of the Massa- 
chusetts State Board of Education. There was 
never greater reverence for education in Massa- 
chusetts than at this time. The population was 
homogeneous; academies were numerous, and their 
inspiration was felt throughout the state. There 
was much home reading of good books, and every 
boy of any ambition worked out problems and 
studied by himself. Things were not as bad edu- 
cationally as Mr. Mann thought them. There 
was fair teaching in every city and large town. 
The academies were enterprising. On a school 
diet of ten weeks a year Mr. Mann was a good 
illustration of what the home and school work 
was accomplishing. Massachusetts has never 
seen the time when she had a larger proportion 
of good scholars and grand men than when the 
Board of Education was organized. Whenever 
an enthusiast compares existing conditions with 
his ideals he finds the contrast between that 
which is and that which ought to be enough to 
exasperate a man of less zeal than himself. There 
has been no time in the history of Massachusetts, 
from the day of Peregrine White to this year in 
which the wife of the President of the United States 
invites a Boston kindergartner to apply all mod- 
ern arts and devices to her daughter's education, 
in which there was a higher class of talent devot- 
ing its thought and energy to education or mak- 
ing greater sacrifices for the improvement of 



22 HORACE MANN, 

childhood than in the decade in which Horace 
Mann enlisted under the banner of the public 
schools. 

W. E. Channing, Theodore Parker, Samuel J. 
May, Edward Everett, Governor Briggs, Josiah 
Quincy, Robert Rantoul, Jr., Edmund Dwight, 
James G. Carter and Cyrus Pierce were ready 
to say and do all in their power for the good of the 
schools. What a surprise it would be to-day to 
have the mayor of Boston give the secretary of the 
Board of Education a check for $1,500 from his 
own funds to be used in any way he saw fit for the 
advancement of public school education, as his 
grandfather Josiah Quincy, mayor of Boston, did 
fifty-five years ago! What a sensation would be 
created in the legislature were it announced that 
some individual had made a donation of $10,000 
for the professional training of teachers, as was 
done less than sixty years ago by EdmUnd 
Dwight. Jonathan Phillips, a private citizen, of 
whom nothing else seems to be known, sent Mr. 
Mann his check for $500 to use as he thought best 
in the cause of public education. These condi- 
tions need to be understood in order that one may 
appreciate the circumstances that led the president 
of the Massachusetts senate to become the secre- 
tary of the Board of Education. The people as a 
whole had no sympathy with the reformers w T ho 
were shouting long and loud about the degeneracy 
of the times. Nor did Mr. Mann have any adequate 
grounds for his early denunciation. Indeed he 
had no thought of attacking any of the work or 
workers of the day. All that actuated him might 
well inspire any man in any age or in any commu- 
nity to make even greater sacrifices than those 
which he proposed or experienced. It was _iotthat 
Mr. Mann wished to criticise the work done or to 
antagonize the teachers in their work but he felt, 
as who does not feel to-dav, that America's future 



THE EDUCATOR. 23 

depends upon the best common school education 
for those who need it most. His sympathies were 
always with the defective classes^ He devoted 
much of his legislative energy to providing an asy- 
lum for the insane and educational advantages 
for the deaf, dumb and blind. This led him natur- 
ally, inevitably, to realize that many children had 
very little opportunity for school life, and that 
even the best teaching was far below the standard. 
It is as true now as it was then. The fact that he 
had but ten weeks in school in any year of his 
childhood inspired him to plan for something 
more and better for coming generations. "Let 
the next generation be my client" was his watch- 
word. 

Academies were much more influential then 
than now, and they were more efficient than the 
public schools. They had steadily gained since 
the close of the Revolutionary war. In 1780 
there were few private schools, but in 1837, when 
Horace Mann began his work $328,000 was paid 
in one year as tuition in the academies and private 
schools of Massachusetts. This popularity of the 
academies was at the expense of the public 
schools in the wealthy communities. In 1837 the 
average expenditure per pupil in the state was 
$2.81 while in the twenty-nine most populous and 
wealthy towns it was but $2.21. 

Enthusiasm for academies created the impres- 
sion that the education of youth was of much 
greater moment than of children. In consequence 
little was done for children under ten years of 
age and in some communities nothing. Nan- 
tucket, then having 9,000 inhabitants, made no 
provision whatever for the younger or the older 
children but only for the grammar grade pupils. 

There was almost no attempt to do anything at 
public expense for children of academic age. The 
educational ardor and aspiration therefore was 



24 HORACE MANN, 

tending more and more to benefit the few who 
would make some adequate return to the com- 
munity in a scholastic way. There was no for- 
eign population, and no parent allowed his chil- 
dren to grow up in ignorance. The home did 
much, the grammar school and the academy did 
more and the community was developing a good 
class of citizens. 

Mr. Mann saw how important a part the 
churches played in the patronage of the acad- 
emies, and his religious prejudices were aroused. 
He had honest doubts regarding the good accom- 
plished by sectarian schools. He had high ideals 
of the good which must result from the education 
together of children of all classes. It was a 
blending of fear and hope combined with intense 
conviction that actuated him when he announced 
that his law library was for sale, bought such 
educational books as were to be found, and went 
to a quiet home at Franklin for a few days of 
study and meditation. 

His special preparation for the work was not 
definite. He had seen little of schools as a pupil, 
had taught three short terms in rural schools, had 
instructed for a short time in college, had served 
for eight years on the school board of Dedham, 
had been closely associated with such inspiring 
work as the education of the deaf, dumb and 
blind, was the close friend of all the reformers 
in education from the outside but knew few teach- 
ers and had rarely attended educational gather- 
ings. Maria Edgeworth and James Simpson were 
his most available authors. 

Among the objects that he set himself to ac- 
complish were the awakening of public sentiment 
through tife holding of public educational gather- 
ings, the introduction of school apparatus, the 
substituting of oral for text-book instruction, the 
training of teachers, the better construction of 



THE EDUCATOR. 25 

schoolhouses, the use of better books, better ar- 
rangement of studies, better modes of instruction. 
He went into retirement at Franklin for a time 
and prepared an address for the awakening of 
public sentiment. When he began his career by 
holding revival meetings in the interest of educa- 
tion in every village from Nantucket to Pittsfield, 
he could not understand why people cared infinitely 
more for a political speech than an educational 
preachment, why they would leave him and go ten 
miles to listen to a fourth-rate politician. In the 
town of Barre, for illustration, the president of 
the County Association and the president of the 
American Institute of Instruction went twelve 
miles to hear a political address when he was 
lecturing upon education in their town. Of 
Springfield, Mr. Mann wrote, "In point of num- 
bers, a miserable meeting it has been." At Pitts- 
field there were only two or three people present. 
At Worcester he said, "On the whole, I think a 
little dent has been made in this place." After 
speaking at Great Barrington, he wrote, "To make 
an impression in Berkshire in regard to the 
schools is like trying to batter down Gibraltar with 
one's fist." After Northampton, he wrote, "Ah, 
me! I have hold of so large a mountain that there 
is much danger that I shall break my own back in 
trying to lift it." Of Barnstable he wrote, "As 
miserable a convention as can well be conceived. 
I will work in this moral as well as physical sand- 
bank of a county till I can get some new things 
to grow out of it." Of Dedham, his old borne 
town, he says, "The convention was a meagre, 
spiritless, discouraging affair. A few present 
and all who were present chilled, choked by their 
own fewness. If the schoolmaster is abroad in 
this county I should like to meet him." 

When Mr. Mann made a political speech at 
Westport, a hundred people went over from New 



26 HORACE MANN, 

Bedford to hear hini, and the whole town turned 
out; but when, a few evenings later, he spoke in 
the same place on education, no one came from 
New Bedford, and scarcely any one came out at 
Westport At Wellileet he had "a miserable, con- 
temptible, deplorable convention." 

On a second visit to Pittsneld, he found that no 
arrangements had been made to prepare the 
schoolroom for the convention, so he and George 
N. Briggs, at that time governor of the state, pur- 
chased a broom and themselves swept the school- 
house and put it in order. At ten o'clock, the 
time appointed for the convention, there was not 
an individual present. At 11.30 o'clock eight peo- 
ple had come. This is a sample of the "enthu- 
siasm" with which his work was received. It 
was very annoying to him to feel that as a lawyer, 
politician and president of the senate he was a 
popular speaker, but that as an educator he could 
arouse little or no enthusiasm. Strange as this 
seems there have been many experiences of the 
officers of the Board of Education in recent years 
not unlike these of sixty years ago. Many meet- 
ings are held which are attended by almost none 
except teachers. In many towns already men- 
tioned there have been educational gatherings 
with much talent provided at which the attend- 
ance was scandalously small. But Mr. Mann's 
enthusiasm did not wane, and he ultimately had 
the state thoroughly aroused. This was his great 
reward. 

His new life was full of embarrassing incidents. 
The first Sunday that he was away from home on 
his new w r ork was spent at Martha's Vineyard. 
There were three evangelical churches in Edgar- 
town, a Congregational, Baptist and Methodist. 
Everyone knew that he was non-evangelical in his 
belief, and there was great curiosity to know at 
which of the churches he would worship; no one 



THE EDUCATOR. 27 

had conceived the idea that he could avoid attend- 
ing any. When the day arrived, to the consterna- 
tion of all, he drove over to see the Chapoquiddie 
Indians, with their guardian, Mr. Thaxter, who 
wished his advice regarding the intellectual and 
moral improvement of the tribe. He met the 
Indians at the meeting-house-schoolhouse where 
the Sunday school was held six months in the 
year. This Sunday school was the only school 
maintained for them, and this was for half the 
year. This Sunday episode produced a scandal, 
and the scene can be better imagined than de- 
scribed when a clergyman after riding nine miles 
on Monday morning to attend the educational 
meeting learned that the head of the educational 
system of Massachusetts had been "to ride" in- 
stead of to church the previous day. 

This work, however, was not without its en- 
couragements. On November 10th of his first 
year he went to Salem and held a convention dur- 
ing the day. He was booked also for an evening 
lecture in the regular course of the city. The 
convention was very thinly attended, even his 
own personal friends, like Rantoul and Salton- 
stall, not being present, but the few who were 
there were so aroused by his address that they 
insisted that it should be repeated as the lyceum 
lecture of the evening, on which occasion the 
popular response was so hearty as to cheer him 
in his work for many a day. The first four years 
were largely devoted to these crusades, to the 
reading of the various school reports of the state, 
and to writing his own state report. Greater de- 
votion or faithfulness was never witnessed in any 
school official. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE NORMAL SCHOOLS. 

The normal schools required much time and 
energy, sacrifice and wisdom. It was a great in- 
novation that was proposed by James G. Carter, 
the most far-sighted man of that wonderful edu- 
cational period. It was his thought first, his 
devotion and wisdom to the last, as it was Mr. 
Edmund Dwight's gift of f 10,000 that made pos- 
sible the first normal schools this side the sea, but 
to Mr. Mann the honor and the glory have been 
and ever will be given and rightly, too, although 
one may fail to explain the equity in such an 
assignment. 

In 1647 Massachusetts took a position educa- 
tionally that has been equaled by no other com- 
munity on this continent when one considers its 
significance in point of time, conditions and pro- 
jection through the subsequent two hundred and 
fifty -years. The discussion as to the relative in- 
debtedness of the colonists to England and the 
Netherlands has no place here, — suffice it to say 
that no community in either hemisphere has any 
such record of honor in education for so long a 
period as has Massachusetts since 1647. The 
methods have changed and the emphasis has been 
shifted from time to time, but it is one uninter- 
rupted record of loyalty to education and of gen- 
eral progress. The apparent lapses are more in 
the seeming than in the fact. 

Mr. Mann was never a historian ; he had not the 
historian's instinct or training and his utterances 
upon the decadence of the system from 1647 to 



TEE EDUCATOR. 29 

1837 must be taken with several grains of allow- 
ance for his talent in special pleading. It is one 
of the requisites of a reformer to be able to mag- 
nify his own theory and practice, and to minify 
all that has preceded him. This vicious attitude 
toward other good workers is an indispensable 
virtue in any reformer. He must see only the 
weakness and wrong in the past and only strength 
and right in his own plans and purposes. John 
the Baptist's denunciations were vital to the 
love and mercy of Jesus. James G. Carter was 
more far-sighted and had greater wisdom in deal- 
ing with conditions; Edmund Dwight had more 
means and the consecration to use them, but 
neither had the heroism to say as did Horace Mann 
that from 1647 to 1826 the laws were altered 
again and again, to adapt them to the decreasing 
demands of the public in regard to schools. 

There has been one pertinent illustration in 
modern times of the inevitable tendency to be- 
little one's predecessors in educational activity. 
The only real ''reform" movement in education 
was twenty years ago when Quincy, Mass., at- 
tained a national reputation through Charles Fran- 
cis Adams, Jr., who claimed to have reformed the 
schools of that town in his great pamphlet upon 
"The New Departure." 

From 1852 to 1856 Charles Francis Adams, 
senior, was chairman of the school board of 
Quincy. The tone of his report was all that any 
reformer could ask. His administration was re- 
markably successful. 

1852. "The standard of instruction has greatly 
risen, is rising yet. In no town has the advance 
been more marked than in Quincy. All the teach- 
ers for the past year are entitled to great credit. 

1853. "The schools generally are in a very sat- 
isfactory condition. It is not too much to say of 
them that they will now compare with schools of 



30 HORACE MANN, 

the same grade anywhere. Nowhere has the re- 
sult been more satisfactory ... highly satisfac- 
tory. . . . Highest approbation, etc. 

1854. "The grammar school is now in all re- 
spects in an excellent condition. 

1855. "We have heard recitations in the high 
school in French, in geometry, in algebra, in Latin 
and in Greek which would have done credit to 
any school in our commonwealth.-' 

No more could have been said in praise of the 
schools than is to be found on every page of the 
reports written by Charles Francis Adams re- 
garding the Quincy schools from 1852 to 185G. 
Nor is it miscellaneous praise for the virtues are 
discriminately set forth. He then resigned his 
place to his son, John Quincy Adams, who was 
chairman in 1857 and 59, 60 and 62, 70, 71, 72, 73. 
Of the schools he wrote with the same enthusiasm 
as his father had done. 

1857. "The results are equal to the most san- 
guine expectations. There is not one of these 
schools respecting which we would speak in terms 
other than highest commendation. 

1859. "The schools are a source of congratu- 
lation and pride. . . . Schools are excellent. . . . 
Method and manner with children is peculiarly 
happy. Of the twenty-one schools in town not 
one is bad ... a feeling of general joy and sur- 
prise. 

1860. "The results are highly satisfactory . . . 
schools are good, most of them very good. It is 
with hearty satisfaction that your committee can 
honestly present so nattering a report. 

1S70. "The primary schools are in excellent 
condition. The intermediate schools and their 
teachers merit our highest commendation; they 
are all good. The high school meets our highest 
expectation." 

In view of what is to be said bv his brother 



THE EDUCATOR. 31 

three years later the following is of special inter- 
est. 

1871. "We have a custom of subjecting every 
school in town to a searching scrutiny by the whole 
committee at the close of the school year. This 
duty was performed with a good deal of thorough- 
ness. All are excellent and all are improving." 

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., a younger son, 
came upon the board the next year, 1872, and 
these schools that had been "highly satisfactory," 
"in excellent condition," "credit to any town in 
the commonwealth," "nothing better anywhere," 
"equal to the most sanguine expectations," "man- 
ner with children peculiarly happy," "examined 
with a searching scrutiny," "honestly present a 
flattering report," etc., etc., were found to have 
gone all to pieces for the accommodation of the 
third member of the same family Mr. Charles 
Francis Adams, Jr., who says: 

1875. "This vain attempt to build upon nothing, 
costing the country untold millions of money . . . 
will surely lead us to mental bankruptcy if the 
stupendous fraud [so vigorously praised by father 
and brother] is not soon abolished and healthier 
plans and better teaching, etc. These methods 
[of his father and brother] turned scholars into 
parrots and made meaningless farce of education. 
For real results the teacher cared nothing. Smat- 
ter was the order of the day [under the system of 
his father and brother]. The teachers [of the 
father and brother] were old, lymphatic, listless 
schoolmarms. The examinations [of his father 
and brother] were a study for the humorist." 

It does not require a humorist to enjoy the 
assurance with which this third member of the 
Adams family praises the results under his ad- 
ministration. 

1875. "The application of these new ideas has 
produced as great a change in teaching as Har- 



32 HORACE MANN, 

vey's great discovery did in medicine. The in- 
fant schools are transformed from painful to 
pleasant places. The excellency or peculiarity 
of our schools has excited a great deal of interest 
among those persons who are observant of such 
matters. The people of Quincy are gathering a 
harvest of greater volume and value, etc. . . . 
Really surprising progress has been effected in the 
schools. ... A high degree of excellency has 
been attained where excellence is most unusual. 
. . . We must frankly confess that we are in a 
great measure satisfied with the work we are 
doing, and have good reason to anticipate a con- 
stantly increasing improvement as we apply our 
principles more thoroughly." 

This chapter from modern history is introduced 
merely to show that this tendency of human na- 
ture is very general and Mr. Mann must not be 
censured for overdrawing the conditions of the 
schools before he entered upon the work. The 
bad is always indescribably bad, the good is never 
extravagantly good, the indifference in unevent- 
ful times is always heartrending to one who is 
keenly alive to all the responsibilities of the hour. 
It is equally true in political, social, educational 
and religious life, and, until human nature 
changes, it will continue to be so. Indifference can 
be aroused and the best can triumph over the 
worst only when someone possesses the masterly 
power to make and meet a crisis. This power 
Horace Mann possessed, and to him rather than 
to any other man of his time belongs the honor 
and the glory. 

The normal schools introduced the modern im- 
provements to the American schools. The acad- 
emies which came in with the close of the Revolu- 
tionary war were to all intents and purposes the 
normal schools for half a century. Nearly every 
teacher in Massachusetts received his instruction 



THE EDUCATOR. 33 

and inspiration at a New England academy. Too 
much can hardly be said in their praise, but the 
time came when they were thought to be possibili- 
ties for the rich alone. This fear was never fully 
justified since the larger number in most of these 
academies were poor boys "working their way," 
but for some cause the public schools in the 
wealthier places were not universally patronized 
by the "higher classes" of the community. There 
was a final struggle between the inherited aris- 
tocratic sentiment from across the seas and the 
new-born democracy of America. 

Until the academy came, the sons of wealthy 
people were largely educated in England. That 
was the one aristocratic ideal. The academy was 
the transition for the remnant of aristocracy to 
the new democracy. It matters little whether or 
not there was any justification for the fears enter- 
tained from 1826 to 1837; the fact that these fears 
existed necessitated a radical transformation to 
uniform democracy in matters of education. It 
was this transformation that Mr. Mann accom- 
plished and the normal school is in large meas- 
ure the instrumentality. 

The first academy came at the close of the 
French and Indian war (1763) through the gener- 
osity of William Dummer, educated in the Bos- 
ton Latin school and in the academies of England. 
This was followed at the close of the Revolution- 
ary war by Phillips Andover and Leicester 
academies, and a score of other similar institu- 
tions. These furnished teachers for all the better 
schools but they rapidly removed from the com- 
mon schools all traces of Latin and Greek. In 
1824 there were but seven towns in the state 
required by law to provide for the teaching of 
Latin. The teachers were very poorly qualified 
for their work as soon as they were not required 
to teach Latin. That requirement in the earlier 



34 HORACE MANN, 

days had provided scholarly teacliers. When that 
was abandoned the standard forjnen was ability 
to "fight it out" in the winter schools, and for 
women availability for the summer schools. 

In 1824-5 James G. Carter of Lancaster wrote 
an earnest series of articles, over the signature 
"Franklin," for 'the Boston Patriot. His claim 
was that "the first step, toward reform in our 
system of popular education, is the scientific prep-" 
aration of teachers for the free schools. And the 
only measure that will insure to .the public the 
attainment of this object, is to establish an insti- 
tution for the very purpose." 

At this time Horace Mann was beginning the 
practice of law in Dedham. Mr. Carter wrote 
upon this theme with great ability for ten years 
before Mr. Mann's attention was given to the sub- 
ject with any great devotion. To this agitation 
by Mr. Carter we owe the consecration u of Mr. 
Mann, and we can readily understand the disap- 
pointment of Mr. Carter and the indignation of 
his friends when Mr. Mann was elected to the 
secretaryship which Mr. Carter had every reason 
to expect would come to him. 

The first memorable act of the board was to 
recommend the passage of a law providing for the 
establishment of normal schools. In March, 1838, 
Hon. Edmund Dwight, one of the leading mem- 
bers of the board, offered through Mr. Mann 
f 10,000 for the establishment of a normal school 
under the auspices of the state board, provided 
the Legislature would appropriate a similar sum; 
Within a month, April 19, — -a date memorable 
from so many events, — the Legislature accepted 
the proposition. On May 30 the state board voted 
to establish a school in Plymouth county and 
December 28 it voted to locate two others at Lex- 
ington and Barre. The schools were opened, at 
Lexington July 3, 1839; at Barre, September 4, 



THE EDUCATOR. 35 

1839; at Bridgwater, September 9, 1840. The 
schools at Lexington and Barre were both re- 
moved so that Bridgewater is really the eldest - 
normal school on the continent. The location of 
this school was due to the activity of Rev. Charles 
Brooks of Hingham who had visited Prussia in 
1835 and had steadily advocated the Prussian 
system of professional training for Massachu- 
setts. Thus really the normal schools were in- 
spired by the Prussian system-. 

The first school opened was at Lexington under 
the principalship of Cyrus Pierce, one of Amer- 
ica's great teachers. At the opening only three 
persons presented themselves for admission. It 
grew slowly but steadily. Mr. Pierce did all the 
teaching, superintended the interest of the board- 
ing house, rose every morning in the winter at 
3 o'clock to build the fires; a great part of the 
time sleeping but three hours a night. The open- 
ing day to which Mr. Mann had looked forward 
with bright anticipation proved to be one of the 
most discouraging. He wrote of it, that night: 
"What remains but more exertion, more and more, 
till it must succeed." Two months later, on Sep- 
tember 4th, the Barre school was opened with 
twenty students. The governor of the common- 
wealth (George N. Briggs) opened the school with 
a fine address upon the origin, progress, advan- 
tages and hopes of the normal school. 

Mr. Mann gave much attention to these schools, 
notably to the one at Lexington. He was greatly 
annoyed at the criticisms which were heard on 
every hand. In the nature of the case the talent 
which applied for training was not always the 
best; the course was all too brief; the equip- 
ment too limited There were many academies 
that offered better opportunities for scholarship 
and none of these institutions of learning were 
friendly. The teachers already at work were in- 



36 HORACE MANN. 

clined to interpret every argument for trained 
teachers as a reflection on themselves. Not every 
"normalite" succeeded as a teacher, in the judg- 
ment of the local authorities. The ideal normal 
was far removed from the real school and no one 
appreciated this more than Mr. Mann whose heart 
failed him many times in the first years of the 
schools. 

Here are sample sentences from persons of edu- 
cational influence: -'Too much is claimed for the 
normal schools in their infant state." "The prin- 
cipals of the normal schools are comparatively in- 
experienced in public school-keeping. They are 
without that practice which makes perfect." "The 
experience of a graduate of a normal school, 
through the model school, is less than two weeks." 

Mr. Mann was stimulated to greater effort and 
to higher endeavor because of these criticisms. 
He heard every word and used the judgment of 
his critics as his own instructor in. jserfecting 
these schools. The normal schools, now the glory 
of the educational work of America, owe more 
than will ever be expressed to his heroism, pa- 
tience, devotion and skill. 



CHAPTER VII. 

OPPOSITION. 

In the spring of 1840, the formal opposition to 
the Board of Education manifested itself. The 
Observer, the Recorder and some of the Boston dai- 
lies were making very bitter attacks upon the 
board, and in March, 1840, these assumed the pro- 
portion, as Mr. Mann said, of an "atrocious at- 
tack." He was fearful that the opposition would 
win in the Legislature. Referring to this possi- 
bility, he said: "This is bad. I must submit; but 
the cause shall not die if I can sustain or resus- 
citate it. New modes may be found if old ones 
fail. Perseverance, perseverance, and so on a 
thousand times and ten thousand times ten thou- 
sand." What a spirit! It was for such an hour 
that he had come into power. 

His election was a great disappointment to 
James G. Carter and his friends. Mr. Carter had 
made the Board of Education and the normal 
schools a possibility; to him belonged the credit, 
to him should have gone the honor, had the ques- 
tion of honor been the first consideration. Hon. 
Edmund Dwight was not unappreciative of the 
service rendered by Mr. Carter, but he foresaw the 
emergencies that must arise and he was con- 
vinced that it was a question of service to a cause 
and not of honor to a man ; and when the conflicts 
raged with such fury from March, 1840, to Janu- 
ary, 1847, the wisdom of the choice was demon- 
strated. There was not another man in the state 
probably who could or would have led to victory 
as did Horace Mann. 



38 HORACE MANN, 

Things were not as bad in the Legislature in 
1840 as Mr. Mann feared, for the "bigots and van- 
dals," as he styled them, were defeated by a vote 
of 245 to 182. The author of this opposition move- 
ment was the next year dropped from the Legis- 
lature by his constituency "as a reward of his 
malevolence." This was encouraging to Mr. Mann 
who wrote, in the exuberance of victory: "The 
common school is the institution which can re- 
ceive and train up children in the elements of all 
good knowledge and of virtue before they are 
subjected to the alienating conceptions of life. 
This institution is the greatest discovery ever 
made by man; we repeat it,_the_common school is 
the greatest discovery ever made by man. In two 
grand characteristic attributes, it is supereminent 
over all others ; first in its universality, for it is capa- 
cious enough to receive and cherish in its parental 
bosom every child that comes into the world; and 
second, in the timeliness of the aid it proffers, — 
its early, seasonable supplies of counsel and guid- 
ance making security antedate danger. Other 
social organizations are curative and remedial; 
this is a preventive and an antidote. They come 
to heal diseases and wounds; this, to make the 
physical and moral frame invulnerable to them. 
Let the common school be expanded to its capa- 
bilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of 
which it is susceptible, and nine-tenths of the 
crimes in the penal code will become obsolete; the 
long catalogue of human ills will be abridged; 
men will walk more safely by day; every pillow 
will be more inviolable by night; property, life 
and character will be held by a stronger tenure; 
all rational hopes respecting the future will be 
brightened." 

But Mr. Mann's confidence in the Legislature's 
disapproval of the opposition was not well placed, 
for a minority of the Committee on Education 



THE EDUCATOR, 39 

promptly reported a bill to transfer the powers 
and duties of the Board of Education to the gov- 
ernor and council, and the duties of the secretary 
to the secretary of state. This movement was 
attributed with some justice to the radical evan- 
gelical members of the Legislature and caused 
Mr. Mann no little anxiety, for the plea of economy 
was very popular that year. The vote on the 
measure was postponed from time to time through 
the whole session, so that there was no peace for 
the secretary, and he had little time or strength 
to give to the legitimate work of the office. When 
it did come to a vote, the opposition chose an hour 
when everything was to its advantage, but even 
then the board was sustained by a vote of 131 to 
114. Of this Mr. Mann wrote to a friend: "Never 
was any question taken under circumstances more 
disadvantageous to the prevailing party, and 1 
am inclined to think that it will be considered, in 
flash language, a settler." 

The next year, 1842, the opposition made no 
demonstration in the Legislature and the feeling- 
was very strong towards the board and its meas- 
ures. Mr. Mann secured an appropriation of 
f 6,000 a year for three years for the normal 
schools and $15 for each school district in the 
state for a school library, on condition of its rais- 
ing a like amount. These annual legislative afflic- 
tions were more venomous and terrific than one 
in this day can appreciate. Religious opposition 
to Mr. Mann and his work was very keen; the 
anti-temperance sentiment was ever on the alert 
to discomfort him, the proslavery forces were 
always against him, and all phases of conserva- 
tism made him a target. Combined with all these 
was a bitter opposition from the teachers and the 
ever ready plea for economy. Mr. Mann met every 
issue and every foe and won in every conflict. He 
had more medals of victorv than ever came to anv 



40 HORACE MANN, 

other educator. What Patrick Henry was in 
1765, Sam Adams in 1775 and Abraham Lincoln 
in 1856-60, Horace Mann was in 1840-47. Men 
are raised up for special work and no man ever 
came to the kingdom in better time than Horace 
Mann, the educator. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MR. MANN'S REPORTS. 

To his annual reports Mr. Mann gave his best 
thought. There have been no such official educa- 
tional documents prepared in any country. The 
later reports of the Massachusetts board, its secre- 
tary and agents have often been of inestimable 
value. Superintendent W. T. Harris of St. Louis, 
Superintendent Henry F. Harrington of New 
Bedford, Superintendent George Howland of 
Chicago, and others, issued great reports but 
there has been nothing to compare with these 
twelve reports of Mr. Mann. The state of New York 
reprinted one of them entire, distributing 18,000 
copies gratis through the state. At least one of 
them was republished entire at public expense in 
England and one at least was translated and re- 
published entire at government expense in Ger- 
many. Parliament invited him to enlarge upon 
that department of his seventh report which re- 
ferred to the schools of Great Britain and re- 
printed it as a government document. 

Many of his public addresses were printed and 
extensively circulated. His address before the 
American Institute of Instruction at New Bed- 
ford, August, 1842, was specially published in an 
edition of 20,000 for free distribution. There 
has never been anything to compare with the 
volume of his writing, its freshness and vigor, its 
practical and philosophical wisdom. At this day 
it is a better education to read his twelve reports, 
his speeches and his controversies than the writ- 
ings of any ten men aside from Henry Barnard 



42 HORACE MANN, 

and W. T. Harris. His first annual report (1837) 
must have been a revelation in that day as it is 
without a peer even to this day. He said: "The 
object of the common school system is to give to 
every child a free, straight, solid pathway, by 
which he can walk directly up from the ignorance 
of an infant to a knowledge of the primary duties 
of a man." He devotes the report to an exhaust- 
ive, scholarly, mighty treatment of these ques- 
tions: The situation, construction, condition and 
number of schoolhouses; the manner in which 
school committee-men discharge their duties; the 
interest felt by the community in the education of 
all its children; the position in which a certain 
portion of the community stands in relation to 
free schools; the competency of teachers. Upon 
each of these he enlarged with much brilliancy, 
discussing every phase of these questions. 

His argument for expert supervision was as 
skilful and vigorous as anything uttered in later 
times: "The state employs in the common schools 
more than three thousand teachers at an expense 
of more than $465,000 raised by direct taxation. 
But they have not one-thousandth part of the 
supervision which watches the same number of 
persons having the care of cattle, spindles or of 
the retail of shop goods. Who would retain his 
reputation for sanity, if he employed men on 
his farm, or in his factory month after month with- 
out oversight and even without inquiry." In this 
tone he sweeps on from point to point with mar- 
velous power. 

The second annual report (1838) was largely 
an arraignment of the educational means and 
methods as he found them. The first had treated 
of ideals and their attainment as applied to edu- 
cation in the state. In the second he showed that 
"the common school system of Massachusetts had 
fallen into a state of general unsoundness and de- 



TEE EDUCATOR. 43 

bility." The schoolhouses were ill adapted to en- 
courage mental effort and absolutely perilous to 
the health of children; the schools were under 
sleepy supervision; many of the most intelligent 
and wealthy citizens had become estranged from 
their welfare, and the teachers, although, with very 
few exceptions, persons of estimable character 
and of great private worth, yet in the absence of 
all opportunity to qualify themselves for the per- 
formance of the most difficult and delicate task 
committed to human hands, were deeply and widely 
deficient in a knowledge of the human mind as the 
subject of improvement and a knowledge of the 
means best adapted wisely to unfold and direct 
its growing faculties. "To expect that a system 
animated only by a feeble principle of life, and 
that life of irregular action, could be restored at 
once to health and vigor, would be a sure prepara- 
tion for disappointment." 

There has never been a more close, scientific 
study of the actual conditions than those which 
led to the publication of this second report. This 
analytic study is supplemented by a remarkable 
presentation of pedagogical principles. He shows 
that in learning the effective labor must be per- 
formed by the learner himself and generally this 
must be a conscious effort on the pari of the pupil, 
who must not be a passive recipient but an active, 
voluntary agent. He must do more than admit 
or welcome, he must reach out, and grasp, and 
bring home. The teacher must bring knowledge 
within arm's length of the learner; must break 
down its masses into portions so minute, that they 
can be taken up and appropriated one by one, but 
the final, appropriating act must be learner's. 
Knowledge is not annexed to the mind but the mind 
assimilates it by its own vital powers. Each must 
earn his own knowledge by the labor of his own 
brain. Nature recognizes no title to learning by 



44 HORACE MANN, 

inheritance, gift or finding. Development of mind 
is by growth and organization. All effective 
teaching must have reference to this indispensa- 
ble, consummating act and effort of the learner. 
Every scholar in the school must think with his 
own mind as every singer in the choir must sing 
with her own voice. The first requisite is the 
existence in the mind of a desire to learn. Children 
who spend six months in learning the alphabet 
will, on the playground in a single half-day or 
moonlight evening, learn the intricacies of a game 
or sport, — where to stand, where to run, what to 
say, how to count, and what are the laws and the 
ethics of the game; the whole requiring more in- 
tellectual effort than would suffice to learn half a 
dozen alphabets. So of the recitation of verses, 
mingled with action, and of juvenile games, played 
in the chimney corner. And the reason is, thai 
for the one, there is desire; while against the 
other, there is repugnance. The teacher, in one 
case, is rolling weight up hill, in the other down ; 
for gravitation is not more to the motions of a 
heavy body than desire is to the efficiency of the 
intellect. Until a desire to learn exists within 
the child, some foreign force must constantly be 
supplied to keep him going ; but from the moment 
that a desire is excited, he is self-motive and goes 
alone. 

As is often the case, the multitude of virtues 
in this report made much less impression than the 
few stinging sentences, as "sleepy supervision," 
"a state of general unsoundness and debility," 
"animated only by a feeble principle of life and 
that life in irregular action." The wide world 
over his great utterances were appreciated but 
at home the few sharp expressions rankled and 
were never forgotten by the leading teachers. 

The third annual report (1839) dealt with the 
people and their responsibility for the improve- 



THE EDUCATOR. 45 

ment of the schools. It also dwelt upon the ne- 
cessity of public libraries for the general intelli- 
gence and upon universal and ever enlarging edu- 
cational opportunities. The characteristic fea- 
ture of Mr. Mann's reports is the way in which he 
grapples with one or two subjects and treats them 
with the mastery of a statesman. In this third 
report he shifts the responsibility largely from 
the teacher to the community, to public senti- 
ment, to liberality of support, to loyalty to the 
highest good in locating school buildings, choos- 
ing and retaining teachers. His treatment of the 
factory question in relation to attendance should 
be reprinted and circulated in the factory towns 
all over the land. 

After portraying the educational effect of hav- 
ing a child become a part of a machine by the 
regularity of his movements according to orders 
in a factory, he draws this terrible indictment of 
the system. 

u The ordinary movements of society may go 
on without any shocks or collisions; as, in the hu- 
man system, a disease may work at the vitals, 
and gain a fatal ascendancy there, before it mani- 
fests itself on the surface. But the punishment 
for such an offence will not be remitted because 
its infliction is postponed. The retribution, in- 
deed, is not postponed, it only awaits the full 
completion of the offence; for this is a crime of 
such magnitude, that it requires years for the 
criminal to perpetrate it in, and to finish it off 
thoroughly in all its parts. But when the children 
pass from the conditions of restraint to that of 
freedom, from years of enforced but impatient 
servitude to that independence for which they 
have secretly pined, and to which they have looked 
forward, not merely as the period of emancipa- 
tion, but of long-delayed indulgence; when they 
become strong in the passions and propensities 



46 HORACE 21 ANN, 

that grow up spontaneously, but are weak in the 
moral powers that control them, and blind in the 
intellect which foresees their tendencies; when, 
according to the course of our political institu- 
tions, they go, by one bound, from the political 
nothingness of a child to the political sover- 
eignty of a man, — then, for that people who 
so cruelly neglected and injured them, there will 
assuredly come a day of retribution." 

The public libraries of Massachusetts are her 
pride as they are the wonder and admiration of 
the world, and for them we are largely indebted 
to this third annual report of Mr. Mann. For all 
true, wise advocates of public libraries will turn 
to this treasure-house of argument for their in- 
spiration. 

The fourth annual report grappled with the 
great educational vice of the century following 
the Revolution, the local school district, which 
George H. Martin has so aptly characterized as 
"the high-water mark of modern democracy and 
the low-water mark of the Massachusetts school 
system." Mr. Mann attempted to remedy this 
by the union of districts. It is in this fourth re- 
port that he deals with greatest vigor with the 
problems presented by the normal schools. 

It is interesting to note, at this time, when the 
universities are very generally succeeding in the 
introduction into the grammar schools of "uni- 
versity studies," and demanding "university 
flavor" for the normal schools, that Mr. Mann 
always felt that one of the great victories of his 
educational career was the exclusion of preten- 
sion to scholarship and the accomplishment of 
thoroughness in the branches a knowledge of 
which was fundamental. 

"At the normal school at Barre during the last 
term, the number of pupils was about fifty. This 
number might have been doubled if the visitors 



TEE EDUCATOR. 47 

would have consented to carry the applicants 
forward at once into algebra and chemistry and 
geometry and astronomy, instead of subjecting 
them to a thorough review of common-school 
studies. One of the most cheering auguries in 
regard to our schools is the unanimity with which 
the committees have awarded sentence of con- 
demnation against the practice of introducing 
into them the studies of the university to the ex- 
clusion or neglect of the rudimental branches. 
By such a practice a pupil foregoes all the stock 
of real knowledge he might otherwise acquire; 
and he receives in its stead only a show or coun- 
terfeit of knowledge, which, with all intelligent 
persons, only renders his ignorance more con- 
spicuous. A child's limbs are as well fitted in 
point of strength to play with the planets before 
he can toss a ball, as his mind is to get any con- 
ception of the laws which govern their stupendous 
motions before he is master of common arithme- 
tic. For these and similar considerations, it 
seems that the first intellectual qualification of a 
teacher is a critical thoroughness, both in rules 
and principles, in regard to all the branches re- 
quired by law to be taught in the common schools; 
and a pow r er of recalling them in any of their parts 
with a promptitude and certainty hardly inferior 
to that with which he could tell his own name." 

This fourth report may be characterized as 
high-water mark in the practical treatment of 
everyday questions connected with education. 

The fifth annual report was the first to create 
a sensation the world over. There had been a 
growing reverence for the man throughout Ameri- 
ca and in foreign parts but it was this fifth report 
(1841) that was printed at public expense and dis- 
tributed by the tens of thousand copies by the 
New York legislature, by British authorities, and 
by the German government. It is a glorious 



48 HORACE MANN, 

presentation of the effect of education upon the 
worldly fortunes of men, — upon property, upon 
human comfort and competence, upon the out- 
ward, visible, material interests or well-being of 
individuals and communities. He showed that 
the aggregate wealth of a town will be increased 
just in proportion to the increase of its appropria- 
tions for schools; tax for schools is an investment 
and not a burden; money invested in the educa- 
tion of a child will more than double his patri- 
mony. Education ministers to our personal and 
material wants beyond all other agencies, whether 
excellence of climate, spontaneity of production, 
mineral resources, or mines of silver and gold. 

He shows the difference in productive ability 
between the educated and the uneducated, "be- 
tween a man or woman whose mind has been 
awakened to thought and supplied with the rudi- 
ments of knowledge by a good common-school 
education and one whose faculties have never 
been developed, or aided in emerging from their 
original darkness and torpor, by such a privilege." 

The effect of this report was not to glorify the 
material aspect for he says: "This tribute is still 
the faintest note of praise that can be uttered in 
honor of so noble a theme; and however deserv- 
ing of attention may be the economical view 
of the subject yet it is one that dwindles into in- 
significance when compared with these loftier and 
more sacred attributes of the cause which have 
the power of converting material wealth into spir- 
itual well-being, and of giving to its possessor 
lordship and sovereignty alike over the tempta- 
tions of adversity, and the still more dangerous 
seducements of prosperity, and which — so far as 
human agency is concerned — must be looked to 
for the establishment of peace and righteousness 
upon earth, and for the enjoyment of glory and 
happiness in heaven." 



THE EDUCATOR. 49 

The sixth annual report (1842) attracted com- 
paratively little attention dealing as it did largely 
with the question of teaching physiology in 
schools. Mr. Mann was very generally suspected 
of coming dangerously near being a "crank," and 
his work had been hindered in many important 
phases by this malarial suspicion. He was radi- 
cal on the temperance question, was an intense 
enthusiast over the insane, the deaf, dumb and 
blind, and was withal an ardent champion of 
phrenology. These facts, taken as a whole, led 
the great body of the people to fear that sooner 
or later he would go off at a tangent, so that when 
this sixth report appeared, one of the longest he 
had written, devoted largely to physiology they 
accepted without hesitation the general judgment 
that the expected had happened. For six years 
he had had many very bitter opponents, but the 
more influential among them had nursed their 
wrath in silence. There had been an element of 
devotion and of grandeur in the first five reports 
that led such men to say "the hour has not struck" 
for us to speak. This sixth report came also at a 
time when public impatience with phrenology 
was quite distinct so that the appearance of this 
report marked the moment of misfortune for Mr. 
Mann. He had done the wrong thing at the 
wrong time and no one realized this more than he. 
These conditions must be taken into account in 
estimating the great controversy with the "Thirty- 
one Boston Masters" which followed. Mr. Mann 
thought he was doing the best thing possible to 
right his craft when he married and went abroad 
for several months. The former act was a bless- 
ing for which he never ceased to be thankful, but 
the trip abroad was the beginning of fateful com- 
plications. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE FAMOUS SEVENTH REPORT. 

A sad chapter in Mr. Mann's life is that which 
deals with his controversy with the thirty-one 
Boston masters. Had he died with the issuance 
of his fifth annual report he would have been 
glorified in death as at no other hour of his life. 
Had he "passed away" when he sailed for Europe, 
there would have been a host of good people in 
Massachusetts to say: "Well, he dies at a good 
time.*' But his permanent place in educational 
history is due to the great controversy with the 
Boston masters more than to all other experiences 
of his life. In its humiliation which was great, 
appeared his ultimate power. There was never a 
better illustration of the truth that emergencies 
make men. 

His fifth report was the climax of his growing 
power; its reception by all peoples of both hemi- 
spheres threw him off his guard. He was physi- 
cally worn out and mentally exhausted. The 
highest aspirations of his professional life seemed 
about to be realized and he wrote this report on 
physiology, which, though a great document in 
itself, came as an anti-climax to an expectant peo- 
ple. 

From the first his standard had been the 
Prussian schools which had in twenty years at- 
tained ideal conditions, consequently when he 
went abroad he studied those schools as a wor- 
shipper. He was lionized everywhere in Scot- 
land, England, Ireland, Germany, Saxony, Hol- 
land, Belgium, France and Prussia. His fifth 



THE EDUCATOR. 51 

report met him in every land and he returned with 
renewed physical and mental vigor, with higher 
aspirations, and a realization of the fact that he 
was no longer merely the secretary of the Massa- 
chusetts State Board of Education, but an inter- 
national educational leader. He wrote his famous 
seventh annual report (1843) with every condition 
favorable for the highest nights but equally so for 
occasional descents. No man ever had occasion 
to expect more from any official utterance than 
Mr. Mann from this report, both hemispheres 
were awaiting it and he had every reason to 
anticipate a chorus of praise. 

This seventh report was almost exclusively con- 
cerned with what he saw abroad. Read in the 
light of modern times when criticism is freely in- 
dulged in, one cannot understand why any special 
exception should have been taken to this report 
in which he said: "I have visited countries where 
there is no national system of education, and 
countries where the minutest details of the 
schools are regulated by law. I have seen schools 
in which each word and process, in many # lessons, 
was almost overloaded with explanations and 
commentary; and many schools in which four or 
five hundred children were obliged to commit to 
memory in the Latin language, the entire book of 
Psalms and other parts of the Bible, neither 
teachers nor children understanding a word of 
the language which they were prating. I have 
seen countries in whose schools all forms of cor- 
poral punishment were used without stint or 
measure; and I have visited one nation in whose 
excellent and well-ordered schools scarcely a blow 
has been struck for more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury. On reflection, it seems to me that it would 
be most strange if, from all this variety of system 
and of no system, of sound instruction and of 
babbling, of the discipline of violence and of 



52 HORACE MANN, 

moral means, many beneficial hints for our warn- 
ing or our imitation could not be derived." 

To a reader of our day, he appears to have 
written in the best of spirit, though he says: "1 
do not hesitate to say that there are many things 
abroad which we, at home, should do well to imi- 
tate ; things, some of which are here, as yet, mere 
matters of speculation and theory, but which, 
there, have long been in operation, and are now 
producing a harvest of rich and abundant bless- 
ings. If the Prussian schoolmaster has better 
methods of teaching reading, writing, grammar, 
geography, arithmetic, etc., so that, in half the 
time, he produces greater and better results, 
surely we may copy his modes of teaching these 
elements, without adopting his notions of passive 
obedience to government, or of blind adherence 
to the articles of a church. By the ordinance of 
nature, the human faculties are substantially the 
same all over the world; and hence the best means 
for their development and growth in one place 
must be substantially the best for their develop- 
ment and growth everywhere. The spirit which 
shall control the action of these faculties when 
matured, which shall train them to self-reliance 
or to abject submission, which shall lead them to 
refer all questions to the standard of reason, or 
to that of authority, — this spirit is wholly dis- 
tinct and distinguishable from the manner in 
which the faculties themselves should be trained ; 
and we may avail ourselves of all improved meth- 
ods in the earlier processes, without being con- 
taminated by the abuses which may be made to 
follow them. The best style of teaching arith- 
metic or spelling has no necessary or natural con- 
nection with the doctrine of hereditary right; and 
an accomplished lesson in geography or grammar 
commits the human intellect to no particular dog 
ma in religion. 



THE EDUCATOR. 53 

"A generous and impartial mind does not ask 
whence a thing comes, but rather 'what is it?' 
Those who at the present day, would reject an 
improvement because of the place of its origin, 
belong to the same school of bigotry with those 
who inquired if any good could come out of Naza- 
reth; and what infinite blessings would the world 
have lost had that party been punished by suc- 
cess! Throughout my whole tour, no one prin- 
ciple has been more frequently exemplified than 
this — that wherever I have found the best institu- 
tions, — educational, reformatory, charitable, pe- 
nal or otherwise, — there I have always found the 
greatest desire to know how similar institutions 
were administered among ourselves; and where 
I have found the worst, there I have found most 
of the spirit of self-complacency, and even an 
offensive disinclination to hear of better 
methods.*' 

He takes occasion to speak with exuberant 
praise of the work done by his friend, Dr. S. G. 
Howe in the Institution for the Blind. He gives 
an elaborate transcript of the lesson he heard 
taught in a Scotch school, but his greatest enthu- 
siasm is manifest in his description of work in the 
Prussian schools, emphasizing their methods of 
teaching reading. Referring to these schools, he 
says that he is persuaded that no thorough reform 
will be effected in Massachusetts schools till the 
practice of beginning with the alphabet is abol- 
ished, and says when he inquired in Prussia if 
they began with the names of the letters as given 
in the alphabet, the look they gave him implied 
no great respect for his professional intelligence. 
He devotes several pages to ridiculing the alpha- 
bet method. He thus considers each of the ele- 
mentary school subjects. 

This report appeared in the spring and was 
immediately construed by the Boston masters as 



54 HORACE MANN, 

a reflection upon their methods. The first recep- 
tion of the report was the most enthusiastic given 
to any of his publications, but the private criti- 
cism greatly annoyed him, and he wrote, as early 
as April, "There are owls who to adapt the world 
to their own eyes would always keep the sun from 
rising. Most teachers amongst us have been ani- 
mated to greater exertions by the account of the 
best schools abroad. Others are offended at being- 
driven out of the paradise which their own self- 
esteem had erected for them." The first open at- 
tack was through the columns of a religious 
paper. These attacks became very virulent and 
Mr. Mann replied; but in publishing his reply the 
editor made some "weak and wicked" comments, 
to which he also replied. This reply was not pub- 
lished in that paper but printed elsewhere, and 
a lively newspaper controversy followed. 



CHAPTER X. 

"REMARKS" OF THE MASTERS. 

Through the spring and summer, in nearly every 
educational convention held throughout the state, 
some of the grammar masters of Boston, Worces- 
ter and other cities were sure to be upon the pro- 
gram and always with an attack on the ideas 
presented by Mr. Mann in his seventh annual 
report. But all this, though annoying, was unin- 
portant in comparison with "The Remarks on the 
Seventh Annual Report of the Hon. Horace 
Mann," a document of 144 pages issued by the 
thirty-one Boston masters. These "Remarks" 
were prepared by four different members of the 
Masters' Association, each section read before 
that body, and then published in the hope that 
they might "help in some degree to correct erro- 
neous views and impressions, and thus tend to 
promote a healthy tone in public sentiment in 
relation to many things connected with the wel- 
fare of our common schools." "The teacher, who 
has stood for many years, himself against a host 
of five or six hundred children from all ranks and 
conditions of society, thinks he may once ask a 
hearing before the public. We know that liter- 
ary and moral amateurs seem very often to repu- 
diate the notion, that 'experience is the best 
schoolmaster.' We would not less eschew impa- 
tience with such and the great community, than 
with the children of our charge. We desire no 
assent to anything which is not right and reasona- 
ble; but being of one mind in regard to great 



50 HORACE MANN, 

cardinal principles, we shall once, at least, ven- 
ture 'abroad' in their defence.'' 

The thirty-one masters who signed this docu- 
ment were: Barnum Field, Franklin School; Jos- 
eph Hale, Johnson School ; Samuel S. Greene, New 
North School; Cornelius Walker, Wells School; 
William D. Swan, Mayhew School; William A. 
Shepard, Brimmer School; A. Andrews, Bowdoin 
School; James Robinson, Bowdoin School; Wil- 
liam J. Adams, Hancock School; Peter Mackin- 
tosh, Jr., Hancock School; Samuel Barrett, Adams 
School; Josiah Fairbank, Adams School; C. B. 
Sherman, Eliot School; Levi Conant, Eliot School; 
Aaron D. Capen, Mayhew School; Frederick 
Crafts, Hawes School ; John Alex. Harris, Hawes 
School; Abner Forbes, Smith School; Albert 
Bowker, Lyman School; Nathan Merrill, Franklin 
School; Reuben Swan, Jr., Wells School; George 
Allen, Jr., Endicott School ; Loring Lathrop, Endi- 
cott School; Henry Williams, Jr., Winthrop 
School; Samuel L. Gould, Winthrop School; 
Thomas Baker, Boylston School; Charles Kim- 
ball, Boylston School ; Joshua Bates, Jr., Brimmer 
School; Benj. Drew, Jr., New T North School; 
J. A. Stearns, Mather School; Jona. Battles, Jr., 
Mather School. 

These "Remarks" were as brilliant productions 
as ever came from the pens of grammar masters. 
Six months, practically, had been spent in the 
preparation. Of course there is much which now 
seems too ridiculous to have been written with 
seriousness which then passed for brilliant ap- 
peals to the convictions and prejudices of the 
people. The masters make a strong presenta- 
tion of the virtues of the "Puritan fathers who 
founded a university in ten years after they 
landed upon New England's rude and rocky 
shore," and established the common schools — "to 
whose influence the present generation is in- 



TEE EDUCATOR. 57 

debted for most of the civic, social and religious 
blessings"; call attention to the fact that the 
great leaders of two hundred years could boast 
no higher alma mater than the rude room of some 
humble house in which they gathered a few weeks 
each season; and seem to apologize for the 
teachers "who have left behind them monuments 
which should exact feelings of gratitude rather 
than produce dissatisfaction." 

"With all the rude fixtures and other inconven- 
iences for school purposes, an enlightened public 
sentiment was early formed, which sustained the 
State Legislature in giving hundreds of thousands 
of dollars to the colleges and other seminaries of 
learning. After making allowance for the social 
evils of war and intemperance, the progress of 
education to the present time seems truly wonder- 
ful. The good cause was never more prosper- 
ous than at the time the Board of Education was 
formed, and the establishment of such a body, 
with little or no opposition, certainly indicated a 
healthy tone in public sentiment. All the friends 
of the common schools from the governor to the 
most humble citizen, felt a desire to see these 
institutions improved, and their blessings ex- 
tended to every child in the commonwealth. The 
desire was for improvement, and not for revolu- 
tion, in that 'ancient and cherished institution, the 
common schools of Massachusetts.'" Mr. Mann 
had described a performance by the blind on 
organs unusual in this country, organs construc- 
ted with a set of keys for the feet, so that the feet 
could play an accompaniment to the hands, and 
he is informed, sarcastically, that there are fifty 
such organs in churches within sight of the State 
House. Mr. Mann claimed that in six weeks he 
visited hundreds of schools and saw tens of thou- 
sands of scholars, saying that he did not merely 
look at these schools but that he entered them 



58 HORACE MANN, 

before the first recitation in the morning and 
remained until after the last at night. He is 
reminded that in another connection he speaks 
facetiously of the mathematical instruction in 
our schools saying, "If a boy states that he has 
seen 10,000 horses and you make him count 10,000 
kernels of corn, he will never see so many horses 
again," and they suggest that if he should count 
the number of school days in six weeks he would 
not visit so many hundreds of schools or see so 
many tens of thousands of scholars in the same 
time. 

Mr. Mann commends the good conduct in the 
Holland schools where they have no corporal 
punishment, remarking that one pupil in 100 
is expelled for bad conduct. His attention is 
called to the fact that good conduct is rather ex- 
pensive according to his own showing. 

"A sacrilegious hand has been laid upon every- 
thing mental, literary and moral that did not con- 
form to the new light of the day. Fulminations 
of sarcasm and ridicule, from the lecture room 
and the press, in essays and speeches, were the 
forebodings of the new era in the history of 
common schools, and in the experience of teach- 
ers. After Washington had crossed the Dela- 
ware, in the darkest hour of the Eevolution, 
Congress gave him new power, in consideration of 
the new work before him; but it seemed that 
before the teacher could be allowed to go on in his 
great work of warring against ignorance, idleness 
and vice, his authority should be abridged, and all 
his acquired reputation and influence forfeited, 
as would be the goods of a contraband trade. 
All exaggerated accounts of cases in the school 
discipline of some teachers, and the supposed 
disqualifications of others, seemed to be set forth 
to lessen the authority, influence and usefulness 
of teachers, and give a new direction to public 
sentiment. 



THE EDUCATOR. 59 

"In matters of education, how vain and worth- 
less have been spasmodic efforts and hot-bed 
theories, in which the projectors have disre- 
garded expense and observation! Of such va- 
garies, in the first place, may be mentioned the 
infant school system, which, for a while was the 
lion of its day. The fond parent, the philosopher, 
and the philanthropist, were equally captivated 
by the scintillations of infantile genius. The 
doting mother and the credulous aunt, with 
rapturous delight told their friends of the rapid 
progress of the prattling child; and the learned 
president of a New Englaad college, when he heard 
the little philosopher say that the hat, including 
the ribbon and buckle, was composed of parts of 
the three kingdoms of nature, the animal, vege- 
table and mineral, remarked that he then saw by 
what means the world would be converted; and he 
seemed to think that in Geology, Botany, and Zo- 
ology, there would be no farther need of the 
services of Lyell, Gray and Audubon; but the 
object of live mental vision proved an ignis 
fatuus. The sister of a distinguished governor 
said the whole affair of infant schools reminded 
her of those youthful days when she planted 
beans in the garden and soon pulled them up to 
see if the roots had grown." 

The normal schools, in their early days afforded 
abundant opportunity for these critics to turn 
against them many of the things that Mr. Mann 
had said regarding the common school system. 

Mr. Mann's reason for going abroad was the 
fact that he had spent six years and spared 
neither labor nor expense in fulfilling that por- 
tion of the law which requires that the secretary 
shall collect information; and for this purpose had 
visited schools in most of the free states and in 
several of the slave states of the Union, and had 
done all he could to learn what was being accom- 



00 HORACE MANN, 

plished throughout this country. He had turned 
his eyes again and again to some new quarter of 
the horizon with the hope that they might be 
greeted by a brighter beam of light. 

"Actual observation alone can give anything 
approaching to the true idea. I do not exag- 
gerate when I say that the most active and lively 
schools I have ever seen in the United States 
must be regarded almost as dormitories, if com- 
pared with the fervid life of the Scotch schools; 
and, by the side of theirs, our pupils would seem 
to be hibernating animals just emerging from 
their torpid state, and as yet but half conscious 
of the possession of life and faculties. It is 
certainly within bounds to say there were six 
times as many questions put and answers given, 
in the same space of time, as I ever heard put 
and given in any school in our own country." 

"Nor is this all. The teacher does not stand 
immovably fixed to one spot (I never saw a 
teacher in Scotland sitting in a school-room), nor 
are the bodies of the pupils mere blocks, resting 
motionless in their seats, or lolling from side to 
side as though life were deserting them." 

Mr. Mann is asked what he knows of the present 
state of the Boston schools from actual observa- 
tion and is told that he knows comparatively 
nothing as he has not in six years visited a single 
school in the city and knows nothing of them by 
observation and he makes hasty statements and 
comparisons upon matters abroad and at home. 
For instance, he devotes a chapter to music in the 
Prussian schools while he never heard any sing- 
ing exercise in the Boston schools. It is not 
known to any of the masters that the secretary 
has improved any opportunity, within five years, 
of knowing anything of the views of Boston 
teachers or anything of their plans or the result 
of their instruction. He has not held a meeting 



THE EDUCATOR. $i 

in Boston for six years, and it is difficult for us to 
understand how Mr. Mann could have collected 
or diffused any information in Suffolk County. 
Many of the thirty-one masters were graduates 
of colleges and universities, had had much exper- 
ience, frequently assembling themselves together, 
and had delivered addresses upon many educa- 
tional subjects. 

All in all, this was a bright, strong document 
with which the thirty-one masters might well feel 
satisfied, but the times were against them. Five 
years before, this would have been a stunning 
blow, but the sentiment had changed, and though 
they were congratulated by the fraternity, it 
rallied to the support of Mr. Mann multitudes who 
had hesitated hitherto to identify themselves 
with him. Though many laughed at the sharp 
thrusts and the just criticisms, they ended by 
sympathizing with him, saying that he would 
be more careful of his rhetoric and his figures 
another time. Although it was rumored for 
some weeks that the Boston masters were plan- 
ning a severe attack on Mr. Mann he was taken 
entirely by surprise. He had no suspicion that 
his report was so vulnerable nor that the masters 
were so able. Six months of close study were 
given to their work and when it appeared it was 
a masterpiece. The effect upon Mr. Mann was all 
and more than his bitterest opponent could ask. 
It cut him to the quick. Speaking of it to a friend 
in England he said that he had suffered severely 
in the conflict so far as his feelings were con 
cerned and added, "I have doubtless suffered con- 
siderably in reputation." He was severely 
wrenched by their criticisms and replied while 
his indignation had the better of his judgment. 



CHAPTER XL 

"REPLY" TO "REMARKS." 

Up to this time every public utterance had 
been prepared with the utmost care, with a view 
to permanence in literature, universal scholarly 
respect, and the highest influence. Now he for- 
got all this and wrote without preparation, and 
with a feeling of contempt for his antagonists. 
In this last phase of mind lay his greatest weak- 
ness. Notwithstanding his effort in the "Reply" 
to give the impression that he had the highest 
respect for teachers — some teachers — one cannot 
escape the feeling that he had never had any ade- 
quate respect for the Boston masters. He esti- 
mated them by their numbers, their influence 
gained through the other teachers who were 
indebted to them, and through their pupils whose 
loyalty was natural. In a letter written at the 
time may be seen his misconception of the men, 
affirming, as he does, that these grammar school 
masters saw their own condemnation in these 
descriptions of their European contemporaries, 
and "resolved as a matter of self-preservation, to 
keep out the infection of so fatal an example as 
was afforded by the Prussian schools"; the spirit 
of evil prevailed among the masters; the writing 
of the "Remarks" fell into bad hands. The same 
spirit appears when he says that the normal 
school at Lexington was so much above even the 
conception of most teachers as not to be appreci- 
ated by them as a rule. 

When these "Remarks" appeared he would not 
acknowledge their ability or the strength of any 



THE EDUCATOR. £> 

of their positions, but applied ridicule and treated 
them largely with contempt. It is easy to see how 
he could have crushed the masters at a single blow 
had he dealt with them after his usually careful 
and artistic fashion in a paniphlet of twenty 
pages ; instead, he chose to w 7 rite 175 pages, many 
of which were in no sense creditable to him. 

He read their "Remarks" with astonishment 
and grief but proceeded to show very clearly that 
indignation and retaliation played a more impor- 
tant part. They were accused of introducing his 
name a hundred times and more in connection with 
sentiments that he never felt and with expressions 
that he never uttered; they were not philosoph- 
ical but censorious and aspersive; many of them 
were young, "mewling and purling in their nurses' 
arms" when the principals of the normal schools 
had achieved success; the grammar masters were 
"like thirty-one vulgar fractions multiplied into 
themselves, yielding a most contemptible prod- 
uct" ; there were "sutures and overlappings where 
the heterogeneous parts are rudely joined to- 
gether"; they showed a "culpable indifference to 
truth and the sacredness of character"; their 
literary effort as claimed by themselves in the 
"Remarks" would have required but a line a 
day from each in the time devoted to it; 
many of the "Remarks" were old lectures new- 
vamped; it must have been remorseless imposi- 
tion of labor ; the pages swam with error. 

The depth of his feeling is best shown when at 
the close of a long plea for harmony between him- 
self and the thirty-one masters, he makes an ex- 
ception in regard to one individual, the "author 
whoever he may be of the first section as far as 
page 38" saying, "until he changes his nature or 
I change my nature we must continue to dwell on 
opposite sides of the moral universe." He then 
devotes more than a page to his characterization 



g4 HORACE MANN, 

of this "maligner." Some of the signatures affected 
him with amazement and unspeakable regret and 
could tears of night efface them, they would be 
gladly shed. His report had been mutilated and 
garbled; the shade had been copied and all the 
light omitted; a forgery of the original had been 
sent out; they had made fraudulent transposi- 
tions. 

The "Reply" was certainly earnest and the 
writer had all the over-confidence of an accused 
man who knows his innocence and knows that he 
can prove it, but it is inconceivable that a man of 
his talent and experience should recite the fact 
that he had taught district schools, tutored in 
college and served on a country school board as 
though these were any adequate training. It was 
the man and not his trifling previous experience 
in school work that led to his call to the secretary- 
ship. He nowhere appears to less advantage 
than when he meets their arraignment for not 
having visited the Boston schools. It is incon- 
ceivable that he should give pages to the 
proof that it was not possible for them to know 
absolutely of their own experience whether or not 
he had visited the schools, since some of them had 
not been teaching in their present positions so 
long and they were not always in attendance; and 
proceed to charge them with bearing false- wit 
ness in testifying that they knew what they could 
not have known; giving much space to showing 
that he had once heard a singing lesson, had 
visited two schools with the mayor spending 
half an hour in each, had been at an exhibition 
and in all had visited the Boston schools twelve 
times in five years and then try to demonstrate 
that this is their mathematical share of his time. 
It was fruitless, also, for him to attempt to es- 
cape the responsibility for having spoken dis- 
paragingly of teachers by citing pages of fairly 



THE EDUCATOR. 65 

complimentary things said of them in other 
reports and addresses. No one knew better than 
Mr. Mann that there can be no trial balance in 
such cases, that there are debts that can never 
be paid off in that way. A man may have paid 
millions in the past but it does not save him from 
insolvency when the last great debt appears in 
judgment. It was equally useless for a man in 
his position to seek exemption from the conse- 
quences of his undervaluation by quoting from 
other lesser men who had spoken with greater 
indiscretion. There was not wanting abundance 
of opportunity for a terrific blow had he been in 
the mood and condition to have dealt it. Their 
claim that the schools of the Commonwealth were 
in excellent condition when he came into office is 
met in a masterly manner ; in many towns educa- 
tion was sadly neglected; there was no provision 
for higher education at public expense except in 
a few cities; there was in many places no provi- 
sion for children under nine or ten ; many schools 
were open but a few weeks; and many scholars 
travelled from one section of the town to another. 
In this their charge was skilfully met. 

The assumption that he had in any wise 
attacked the Boston schools was almost cruelly 
met with the cold facts that he had merely men- 
tioned Boston with Lexington and a few other 
places in Massachusetts to show the relative 
location compared with the places visited in 
Europe, and that the attempt to make him con- 
nect Boston with the Scotch schools was more 
than absurd, it was vicious. There is no gainsay- 
ing his accusation that their method of making 
him say what he never said would make the Bible 
say there is no God when it merely recites the fact 
the fool hath said this in his heart. Mr. Mann 
admits the justice of the charge of redundancy 
of metaphor and illustration, and says it is the 



60 HORACE MANN, 

fault of his mind, and that if they could only 
know how much he strives against it they would 
pity rather than censure. 

While all of the masters were not in full sym- 
pathy with the tone and temper of the "Remarks" 
in every particular, the fraternal sentiment led 
to the signing of them, and all but W. J. Adams 
stood together loyally. Mr. Mann had an experi- 
ence at Brown University from which he should 
have learned to sympathize with the "thirty-one." 
He was chosen orator of a mock service in the 
chapel and the college authorities forbade the 
exercise. Mann did not favor the carrying out of 
the plans, but when he found that the others would 
insist he said, "I would better rebel against the 
college government than against the majority of 
my fellow students," and so he went ahead with 
them and delivered his oration. It was this spirit 
that made the thirty-one Boston masters a unit 
in their "Remarks." 

Mr. Mann's "Reply" was a great surprise to 
both sides, revealing him in a new light. Such 
vindictiveness was not supposed to be in his 
nature. All the intensity of twenty years of 
political and official life and religious controversy 
had not called forth upon the combined enemies 
of all truth, righteousness and progress a hun- 
dredth part of the terrors of this "Reply." Its 
assumptions and assurances were so extravagant, 
its denunciations so violent, its claims to personal 
superiority so heroic that it fairly dazed the 
public and for the moment paralyzed the masters. 
The masters were in a most uncomfortable and 
unfortunate position. He had made them ap- 
pear to antagonize Dr. Samuel G. Howe, Cyrus 
Pierce, George B. Emerson and others. Like 
magic the social, intellectual and progressive 
political leaders rallied as champions of Mr. 
Mann, who showed himself to be a terrific fighter 



THE EDUCATOR. (57 

and a merciless foe. The peace he offered the 
masters, provided they would offer up Barnum 
Field as a scapegoat, could not be thought of for 
a moment, and Mr. Mann accepted that as a chal- 
lenge from the thirty-one. He enlisted the press 
very generally against the masters and took a 
personal interest in electing members of the 
school board who were his ardent friends. It was 
decided to have a vigorous examination of the 
grammar schools and the masters petitioned the 
mayor not to appoint either Dr. Howe or Mr. Brig- 
ham for either of the examinations, but he made 
each chairman of one of the committees therefor. 
Nothing could have been more discomfiting to 
the masters or a greater triumph for Mr. Mann, 
who advised with, the committee regarding the 
removal of several of the masters, four of whom 
soon retired from the service. When the results 
of the examinations, which had no single ray of 
cheer in them, were made public eight thousand 
copies were printed for free distribution. It was 
at such an hour of triumph for Mr. Mann that they 
prepared the "Rejoinder" to the "Reply" to the 
"Remarks" upon his seventh report. 



CHAPTER XII. 

"REJOINDER" TO THE "REPLY." 

Mr. Barnum Field, respectfully declined to 
sign the "Rejoinder" because Mr. Mann had said 
that he was never to be forgiven and they must 
continue to dwell on opposite sides of the moral 
universe. In his place appeared a powerful 
presentation of the case of the thirty-one masters, 
calm, clear, firm, earnest. The writers of the 
other sections were Wm. A. Shepard, S. S. Greene, 
and Joseph Hale. 

Read to-day, this first part stands as an un- 
impeachable indictment of the matter, method 
and manner of Mr. Mann's "Reply." He 
is charged with misunderstanding or mis- 
representing their "Remarks"; with having ac- 
cused them of what was farthest from their 
thought; with having attributed motives of which 
they never dreamed; with injustice, impatience 
and ill temper. They lose much, however, from 
being forced to apologize for what Mr. Mann had 
made them appear to have said and for having to 
take the attitude of defence of themselves as well 
as of their "Remarks." Their great gain was in 
throwing back upon Mr. Mann every one of the 
really good points he had made against them. 
Where he had represented them as falsifiers not 
worthy to be instructors of youth because they 
had asserted that he knew nothing of the 
Boston schools — claiming to have visited these 
schools twelve times in the five years specified — 
they show that five of these occasions, by his own 
admission, were after the writing of the report; 



THE EDUCATOR. $*j 

that the other seven had not averaged fifteen 
minutes each; that one was to examine a map ex- 
hibition; one to see the building; one was after 
school hours; one was after the recitations closed; 
one at an exhibition ; one for the purpose of mak- 
ing a speech; one to hear a lesson in music. 

Mr. Mann had made much of the fact that he 
had frequently visited Mr. Harrington's and Mr. 
Tower's schools for they were the best in the city, 
but the former had left teaching before the five 
years' limit and the latter two years before that. 

Mr. Mann's attempt to escape their shaft at his 
tens of thousands of pupils visited in Prussia on 
the ground that he had said, "I think I may say" 
and had not put it positively, is turned upon him 
with irresistible force because he said, "I think I 
may say, within bounds, tens of thousands." Mr. 
Mann is left without one unchallenged personal 
position and in every way his "Reply" is shown to 
be more vulnerable than his report. Many of the 
wonderful methods seen in Prussia, published 
and glorified as coming from there were in daily 
use in Boston and had been for four or five years. 
The masters had been studying these new things 
from Prussia in advance and had adopted some, 
and adapted others and his ignorance thereof is 
made to recoil upon him with much force. 

Mr. Shepard's "Rejoinder" is more sarcastic, 
more brilliant and consequently less effective. He 
was a young man but talented and specially gifted 
in controversy and among the many rankling sug- 
gestions was the irresistible ridicule in comment- 
ing upon the Sunday-school visitation. In attempt- 
ing to parry the thrust in the "Remarks" where 
Mr. Shepard had figured out thirty-six days in 
six weeks, Mr. Mann had insisted that as he had 
visited Sunday schools these ought to be included 
and the whole be figured on the basis of forty-two 
days, which correction Mr. Shepard allows very 



70 HORACE MANN, 

graciously but in a decidedly merry vein. Among 
the pleasantries of Mr. Shepard is a figuring out 
of the "leaps into the air in a Scotch school." In 
Mr. Mann's ardent description of this school, 
speaking of the enthusiasm, he declares that the 
children "actually leap into the air from the energy 
of their impulses, and repeat this as often as once 
in two minutes on the average," and Mr. Shepard 
shows that this must mean three thousand, six 
hundred "leaps into the air" or one leap every two 
seconds. 

Mr. S. S. Greene's "Rejoinder" is a dignified dis- 
cussion of what has since come to be regarded as 
the "word" method of teaching reading, and al- 
though "logical," bright and brilliant, it appears 
so absurd in the light of modern revelations that 
one reads it with impatience. From the first Mr. 
Mann had every pedagogical advantage as they 
had the personal. He knew that he was in the 
right, knew that the new methods in reading, 
geography, language and arithmetic were as sure 
to come as noon to follow the dawn. There has 
scarcely been an idea in all the departures of re- 
cent years not embodied in Mr. Mann's seventh 
report. Every progressive movement in teaching 
words, in using maps, in nature study, in abolish- 
ing corporal punishment, in emphasizing the 
moral element in education was championed with 
intensity by Mr. Mann in his seventh report, fifty 
years ago. 

Miss Mathilde E. Coffin has made quite a sensa- 
tion by introducing into the Detroit schools ex- 
amples and problems made from the facts daily 
presented by the press on the ground that every 
example should give some useful information as 
well as present opportunity for practice. Mr. 
Mann wrote a text-book on arithmetic based on 
that idea, pure and simple, nearly half a century 
since. 



THE EDUCATOR. 71 

The "Remarks" and the "Rejoinder" were 
mainly devoted to defending what no power could 
save and the sentiment of the city realized it. The 
logical skill and masterly style of these two great 
documents, together with the fact that every one 
recognized that they had the advantage of him in 
the controversy but gave greater emphasis to the 
truth for which he stood. The strength of these 
two masterpieces of controversy was their weak- 
ness and with the appearance of the "Rejoinder" 
Mr. Mann's place as an educator was for the first 
time unchallenged, and the city and the state were 
ready to do his bidding for the advancement of 
education. The "Rejoinder" caused no ripple of 
excitement, the public interest in the controversy 
had abated, public judgment was made up and 
language counted for little. Mr. Mann was en- 
throned as the genius of educational progress 
and few took the trouble to read what was so well 
said by his antagonists. It was the old, old story 
with which the world is so familiar. "There is a 
tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood 
leads on to fortune." 



CHAPTER XIH. 

THE "ANSWER" AND THE CRISIS. 

Mr. Mann's "Answer" to the "Rejoinder" shows 
him in quite a different light. "Richard is him- 
self again." He was certainly not himself when 
he wrote his "Reply." He admitted afterward 
that he was driven to the wall and must turn upon 
his pursuer and vindicate himself. It was an act 
of desperation. It grieved his friends, who lost 
no time in rallying to his assistance. 

The details of the conflict were taken out of his 
hands at once. It was seen that he was no better 
qualified to conduct his own case than a lawyer 
to plead his own cause or a physician to admin- 
ister to himself in a high fever. Thirty of the 
most eminent men of Boston organized them- 
selves at once to withstand the attack of the 
thirty masters — Mr. Adam's withdrawal having 
reduced their number to thirty. They took in 
hand the election of school boards, the naming of 
committees for the examination of the grammar 
schools, the removal of inefficient grammar 
masters, — four of whom were dismissed within 
two years, — the management of the Legislature 
and all other matters of this kind. The names of 
these men were never made public and their co- 
operation was not known for a long time. The 
masters thought their triumph was to be sure and 
speedy. They had every reason so to think, and 
some of them had said, in the hour of over-confi- 
dence, "the board of education is already abol- 
ished, we only await the action of the Legislature 
to record the fact." They soon found, however, 



THE EDUCATOR, 73 

that they were not in a conflict with Mr. Mann but 
with the spirit of progress itself, with principali- 
ties and powers, with unseen forces, social and 
political. 

No men or body of men could have won 
in such a contest. In it all of Mr. Mann's 
grandeur was apparent. His friendships were in 
evidence, Josiah Quincy, Charles Sumner, Ed- 
ward Everett, John G. Whittier, Henry Wilson, 
Anson P. Burlingame, Theodore Parker, with 
merchants, bankers and professional men, ar- 
rayed themselves with him. These thirty at once 
raised among themselves f 5,000 and asked the 
Legislature for a like sum, that thus f 10,000 might 
be placed in the hands of the Board of Education 
for the improvement of the normal schools. 
Charles Sumner gave his bond for the payment 
of this sum. This was done as a vote of confi- 
dence in the board and its secretary and it passed 
almost unanimously. For the first time there 
was no opposition in the Legislature to the Board 
or to anything that it proposed. Indifference to 
education everywhere disappeared and even the 
state teachers' association that had arranged a 
program attacking the Board, read the signs of 
the times in season to change the plans and have 
no reference to the Board whatever. 

Mr. Mann's "Answer" recognized the fact that 
he had nothing to fear and although he can 
scarcely be accused of being merciful, he was 
temperate, and the chastisements which he ad- 
ministered were with the hand of a master. The 
"Rejoinder" had explained very fully that the 
"Remarks" did not mean what the "Reply" had 
made them seem to mean, and he skilfully humil- 
iated the masters by accepting their adequate 
apology. With the same force he declines to 
notice the "bitterness" in the "Rejoinder" on the 
ground that bitterness is bitter enough when it is 



74 HORACE MANN., 

fresh, but it is intolerable when it is sour. The 
"Answer" had little interest then and less now for 
it was understood then aud is better understood 
now that the controversy had been fought out on 
general influences rather than in the technicali- 
ties of discussion. No one cared how many times 
he had visited the Boston schools, for what he 
had gone, or with whom. None cared how many 
schools he had visited in six weeks in Prussia nor 
how many "leaps into the air" the children made 
per minute in the Scotch school; none cared for 
the question of veracity or the extent of the flights 
of rhetoric or imagination. It was enough that 
Mr. Mann had established the principle that 
teachers should be trained, that was common 
sense; that there should be less corporal punish- 
ment, that was common sense also, — the number 
of punishments in Boston were reduced eighty 
per cent in two years after the "Remarks"; that 
he believed in methods in reading, geography and 
arithmetic, that looked sensible on the surface, 
and the general verdict was that it was vicious for 
the masters to annoy him and call him off from 
his greater work. 

The weakness of his "Reply" and the strength 
of the "Remarks" and of the "Rejoinder" con- 
cerned no one. The world had its own interests 
and concerned itself not the least with the justice 
or the injustice of the case, with argumentative 
winnings and losings of the disputants. The pub- 
lic formed its judgments by the logic of events 
and that verdict glorified Horace Mann and made 
him educationally immortal. 

There is no better opportunity to study the 

hidden forces in society than is presented by the 

conditions in Boston in 1843-6 and the experi- 

. ences of Horace Mann and the thirty-one Boston 

masters. 

Mr. Mann made an educational crisis. To make 



THE EDUCATOR. 75 

a crisis one must focus public attention upon 
some issue; force the opponents to make so clear 
a presentation as to satisfy all parties interested; 
and convince the disinterested public that the 
opposition occupies wholly untenable ground. 
This is the highest achievement of a reformer. 
No man is great who cannot in the emergency, 
focus public attention upon his issue, who does 
not succeed in getting a mighty presentation of 
the opposition, who does not win the disinterested 
public. Pitt's fame was largely due to Walpole; 
and Disraeli's to Gladstone. Webster's niche is 
largely due to the masterly speech of Hayne to 
whom he could and did reply, and Lincoln would 
never have had the opportunity to immortalize 
himself but for the mighty speeches of Stephen 
A. Douglas which he answered. Horace Mann j 
would never have had his place as an educator 
but for the controversy with the Boston masters. 
Were it possible, as it is not, to rob those two 
great documents — the "Remarks" and the "Re- 
joinder" — of their strength, Mr. Mann would be 
robbed largely of his preeminence. His first 
five reports and his crusades up and down the 
state had focused public attention, but in all those 
years there were well-defined suspicions that 
his was not a disinterested service, that his wis- 
dom was not without alloy. The Unitarians had 
captured most of the churches in and about Bos- 
ton, they had taken to themselves Harvard col- 
lege and there were not wanting those who 
hinted broadly that Mr. Mann had sectarian 
designs on the public schools. 

So long as he lectured abstractly, and talked of 
reforms that were needed people were willing 
that he should talk; when the "Remarks" ap- 
peared everybody said, as they did of Walpole a 
hundred years earlier, of Gladstone, of Hayne and 
of Douglas in their time, "that is unanswerable." 



76 HORACE MANN. 

The associates of the masters, like the associates 
of Walpole and Douglas, rallied about their 
champions but the disinterested public went with 
Mr. Mann as it had gone with Mr. Lincoln in the 
Douglas debates. He had made a crisis and his 
seventh report was an immortal document; oppo- 
sition to the normal schools was never more to be 
heard in the land and oral instruction, the word 
method and less corporal punishment were cer- 
tain to come to the Boston schools. He who 
magnifies those great opposing documents helps 
to give the crisis maker his place upon the throne. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE STATESMAN. 

When Mr. Mann left law and politics for an edu- 
cational career he lost caste politically. His in- 
fluence waned. He was not sought for cam- 
paigning* and the Legislature where he had served 
for many years heeded his pleadings little more 
than those of the stranger. Before the echoes of 
the controversy had died away, Mr. Mann was se- 
lected from Daniel Webster's Congressional dis- 
trict to take the seat in Congress made vacant by 
the sudden death in the House of ex-President 
John Quincy Adams and that from a district in 
which he had resided but a short time. It was an 
honor such as has rarely come to an educator. 

From the first he attracted attention in Wash-' 
ington because of his reputation and forensic 
power. He had been in Congress but a little 
time when Mr. Webster delivered his famous— - 
many thought infamous — seventh of March 
speech in which he outraged the political senti- 
ment of Massachusetts. What Mr. Webster 
thought sure to add to his political prospects and 
to the business advantage of Boston was inter- 
preted to his disadvantage. Mr. Mann seized the 
occasion for heroic action. He reasoned, as he 
afterward admitted, that, with the feeling against 
Mr. Webster because of this speech, he would 
not venture to be a candidate for reelection ; if he 
did, defeat was certain. In view of these condi- 
tions Mr. Mann made a vigorous, keen, severe 
attack upon Mr. Webster which angered that 
statesman as nothing in his experience had done 



78 HORACE MANN,' 

before. This was due partly to the fact that it 
came when he was unprepared to meet it and 
partly because of the audacity of the man, and as 
he thought, impropriety of the junior congress- 
man administering a rebuke to the senior senator. 

The best laid plans sometimes come to naught. 
At this juncture President Taylor died, Mr. 
Filmore succeeded him, Mr. Webster was made 
secretary of state and became to all intents 
and purposes the administration with all the 
patronage for New England at his disposal. 
Nothing could have been worse for Mr. Mann. 
The condemnation was now directed to him and 
criticisms, public and private, were showered 
upon him. When his term expired and he was up for 
reelection Mr. Webster and the entire party ma- 
chinery worked against him with such vigor that 
he lost the renomination by a single vote. He de- 
clared himself an independent candidate, spoke in 
every village and hamlet in the district, and was 
elected over the regular nominee by a large vote. 
This was a personal triumph for Mr. Mann, but 
for Mr. Webster it was a personal rebuke which 
he felt keenly. 

Mr. Mann's congressional record was eminently 
creditable and demonstrated his statesmanlike 
qualities. At the close of the regulation term in 
Congress he was made the candidate of the new 
party of Sumner, Wilson, Burlingame and others 
for governor. There was no possibility that year 
of his election and he put no heart into the cam- 
paign. His nomination was made by Henry Wil- 
son and seconded by Anson P. Burlingame in 
speeches that were among the noblest tributes 
ever offered a candidate. With this he retired 
from the political arena where he had won laurels 
and had been of great service to humanity. The 
brilliancy of this experience added a halo to his 
educational service which gave it character and 
statesmanlike dignity. 



CHAPTER XV. 

AT ANTIOCH COLLEGE. 

An inscrutable Providence or a cruel fate led 
Mr. Mann at the age of fifty-six to accept the pres- 
idency of Antioch college, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 
and attempt the impossible under conditions that 
chafed and rasped him for the remaining years 
of his eventful life. 

In America there are two sad pictures, an edu- 
cator out of place at fifty-six* and a politician 
out of a job at any time. Mr. Mann's defeat for 
the governorship, although in no sense a sur- 
prise, left him with no immediate political future, 
and he maybe pardoned if he did not see any 
educational attractions in New England. Had 
he rested for a few months many choices would 
have been presented. The lecture platform, the 
literary arena or any one of many educational 
positions would have been available, but the 
friends of Antioch college had enlisted his sym- 
pathies, appealed to his self-sacrificing devotion, 
magnified the possibilities, misrepresented — let it 
be hoped unintentionally — the reality, and he 
took his family out of Massachusetts that he had 
blessed into an institution, community and condi- 
tions which were at that time as ill adapted to 
him as the depths of the sea to a canary. 

Religiously, educationally, politically, socially, 
philanthropically he was misplaced. His friends 
have sometimes heaped abuse upon the men and 
the community that wore him out completely in 
six years, wrecking him physically and shading 
every hour of those last years, but it is probable 



80 HORACE MANN, 

that he was as great a burden to them as they 
were to him. It is useless to censure, but much 
charity is required for a worshipper at the shrine 
of Horace Mann to see his family literally 
"dumped" homeless and friendless upon the 
debris of that college yard with no house in the 
town, no rooms in the building ready for, or ap- 
proaching readiness, for wife and children, 
and that was really as bright a day as he saw 
until his beautiful translation to the Land Im- 
mortal from the bosom of his family, August 2, 
1858. 

He was misplaced but he could not, would not 
retreat and against the advice of all friends he 
stayed and hoped against hope, sacrificed religious 
ideals, personal comforts, home privileges and 
continued to bury the money of his friends. He 
fought opposition in an arena where he was at 
every disadvantage until at the age of sixty-two 
his spirit seemed to float away in a delightful 
vision and a glorious inheritance remained for 
the widow and orphan of one of the most beauti- 
ful, grand and noble characters that has blessed 
this land. 

A fractional part of the energy, wisdom, devo- 
tion that were wasted at Antioch would have im- 
mortalized him as a college president at Williams 
or at Oberlin, but the history of education has 
gained much from the failure of his party to win 
in the gubernatorial contest of 1852 and from the 
failure to establish an educational institution of 
national fame in southeastern Ohio for from 
the public mind the last ten years of his life have 
faded from memory and all that remains to be 
more and more glorified are the ten years of sac- 
rifice and devotion, of heroism and wisdom, of 
talent and genius with which the schools of 
Massachusetts were blessed, as have been the 
schools of no other commonwealth. » In front of 



TEE EDUCATOR. g]_ 

the State House, in storm and sunshine, as a work 
of art, stands a noble statue of a grand man, but 
a fitter memorial is the manhood and woman- 
hood of Massachusetts, all the brighter and 
better because of the life, the labor and the love 
of 

HORACE MANN. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A-B-C IN THE CONTROVERSY. 

The first question to arise with every reader of 
these pages thus far will be, — "Why not include 
the controversy?" The answer is very simple. 
Because the six principal documents would of 
themselves require a book twelve times the size 
of this. All that can be attempted is to give in 
the concluding chapter a few selections regarding 
one phase of the contest. The a-b-c will afford as 
good an illustration as any. This is Mr. Mann's 
description of the word method or as he styled it, 
the Prussian way of teaching children to read. 

"The teacher first drew a house upon the black- 
board. By the side of the drawing and under it, 
he wrote the word house. With a long pointing 
rod he ran over the form of the letters, — the chil- 
dren, with their slates before them and their 
pencils in their hands, looking at the pointing rod 
and tracing the forms of the letters in the air. 
The next process was to copy the word 'house,' 
both in script and in print, on their slates. Then 
followed the formation of the sounds of the letters 
of which the word was composed, and the spelling 
of the word. Here the names of the letters were 
not given but only the sounds which those letters 
have in combination. The letter h was first 
selected and set up in the reading-frame, and the 
children, instead of articulating our alphabetic h, 
(aitch,) merely gave a hard breathing,- — such a 
sound as the letter really has in the word 'house.' 
Then the diphthong, au (the German word for 
'house' is spelled 4 haus') was taken and sounded 



THE EDUCATOR. go 

by itself, in the same way. Then the blocks con- 
taining h, and an, were brought together, and the 
two sounds were combined. Lastly, the letter s 
was first sounded by itself, then added to the 
others, and then the whole word was spoken. 
Sometimes the last letter in a word was first taken 
and sounded, — after that the penultimate, — and 
so on until the word was completed. The re- 
sponses of the children were sometimes individual, 
and sometimes simultaneous, according to a 
signal given by the master. 

"In every such school, also, there are printed 
sheets or cards, containing the letters, diphthongs 
and whole words. The children are taught to 
sound a diphthong, and then asked in what words 
that sound occurs. On some of these cards there 
are words enough to make several short sentences, 
and when the pupils are a little advanced, the 
teacher points to several isolated words in succes- 
sion, which when taken together make a familiar 
sentence, and thus he gives them an agreeable 
surprise, and a pleasant initiation into reading. 

"After the word 'house' was thus completely 
impressed upon the minds of the children, the 
teacher drew his pointing rod over the lines which 
formed the house; and the children imitated him, 
first in the air, while they were looking at his 
motions, then on their slates. In their drawings 
there was of course a great variety as to taste and 
accuracy; but each seemed pleased with his own, 
for their first attempts had never been so criti- 
cised as to produce discouragement. Several 
children were then called to the blackboard to 
draw a house with chalk. After this, the teacher 
entered into a conversation about houses." 

"Compare the above method with that of calling 
up a class of abecedarians, — or, what is more 
common, a single child, and, while the teacher 
holds a book or a card before him, and, with a 



84 HORACE MANN, 

pointer in his hand, says, a, he echoes a; then b, 
and he echoes b; and so on until the vertical row of 
lifeless and ill-favored characters is completed, 
and then of remanding him to his seat, to sit still 
and look at vacancy. If the child is bright, the 
time which passes during this lesson is the only 
part of the day when he does not think. Not a 
single faculty of the mind is occupied except that 
of imitating sounds; and even the number of these 
imitations amounts only to twenty-six. A parrot 
or an idiot could do the same thing. And so of 
the organs and members of the body. They are 
condemned to inactivity; — for the child who 
stands most like a post is most approved; nay, he 
is rebuked if he does not stand like a post. A 
head that does not turn to the right or left, an eye 
that lies moveless in its socket, hands hanging 
motionless at the side, and feet immovable as 
those of a statue, are the points of excellence, 
while the child is echoing the senseless table of a, 
b, c. As a general rule, six months are spent be- 
fore the twenty-six letters are mastered, though 
the same child would learn the names of twenty- 
six playmates or twenty-six playthings in one or 
two days." 

"The practice of beginning with the 'Names of 
Letters,' is founded upon the idea that it facili- 
tates the combination of them into words. On 
the other hand, I believe that if two children, of 
equal quickness and capacity, are taken, one of 
whom can name every letter of the alphabet, at 
sight, and the other does not know them from 
Chinese characters, the latter can be most easily 
taught to read, — in other words, that learning the 
letters first is an absolute hindrance." 

"The letter a, says Worcester, has seven sounds, 
as in fate, fat, fare, far, fast, fall, liar. In the 
alphabet, and as a name, it has but one, — the long 
sound. Now suppose the words of our language 



THE EDUCATOR. 8.5 

in which this letter occurs, to be equally divided 
among these seven classes. The consequence 
must be that as soon as the child begins to read, 
he will find one word in which the letter a has the 
sound he has been taught to give it, and six words 
in which it has a different sound. If, then, he 
follows the instruction he has received, he goes 
wrong six times to going right once. Indeed, in 
running over a score of his most familiar words, — 
such as papa, mama, father, apple, hat, cat, rat, ball, 
fall, call, zcarm, swarm, man, can, pan, ran, brass, 
glass, water, star, etc., he does not find, in a single 
instance, that sound of a which he has been taught 
to give it in the alphabet." 

"Did the vowels adhere to their own sounds, the 
difficulty would be greatly diminished. But, not 
only do the same vowels appear in different 
dresses, like masqueraders, but, like harlequins, 
they exchange garbs w T ith each other. How often 
does e take the sound of a, as in there, where, etc. ; 
and i, the sound of e; and 0, the sound of u; and u, 
the sound of 0; and y, the sound of i. 

kk In one important particular the consonants are 
more perplexing than the vowels. The very defi- 
nition of a consonant, as given in the spelling- 
books, is, 'a letter which has no sound, or only an 
imperfect one, without the help of a vowel.' And 
yet the definers themselves, and the teachers who 
follow them, proceed immediately to give a per- 
fect sound to all the consonants." 

"I believe it is within bounds to say, that we do 
not sound the letters in reading once in a 
hundred times as we were taught to sound 
them when learning the alphabet. Indeed, 
were we to do so in one tenth part of the in- 
stances, we should be understood by nobody. 
What analogy can be pointed out between 
the rough breathing of the letter h, in the 
words when, where, how, etc., and the "name- 



gg HORACE 31 ANN, 

sound 1 ' (aytch, aitch, or aych, as it is given by 
different spelling-book compilers) of that letter, 
as it is taught from the alphabet? 

"This subject might be further illustrated by 
reference to other languages, — the Greek, for in- 
stance. Will the names of the letters, kappa, 
omicron, sigma, mu, omicron, sigma, make the word 
kosmos? And yet these letters come as near mak- 
ing that word, as those given by the Rev. Mr. Otti- 
well Wood, at a late trial in Lancashire, England, 
did to the sound of his own name. On Mr. Wood's 
giving his name to the court, the judge said, 
'Pray, Mr. Wood, how do you spell your name?' 
to which the witness replied; — 'O double T, I 
double U, E double L, double U, double O, D.' In 
the anecdote it is added, that the learned judge at 
first laid down his pen in astonishment; and then, 
after making two or three unsuccessful attempts, 
declared he was unable to record it." 

To this the Masters made extended reply in 
their "Remarks" from which the following state- 
ment is selected : — 

"When we speak of words, we may mean either 
the audible, or the written signs of our ideas. The 
term word is, therefore, ambiguous, unless it be so 
qualified as to have a specific reference. In 
speaking of familiar words, nothing can be meant 
except that the child can utter them; he knows 
them only as audible signs. To say that printed 
words are familiar to a child's tongue, can have 
no other meaning than that he is accustomed to 
the taste of ink ; to say that such words are famil- 
iar to his ear, is to attribute to that ink, a tongue ; 
and to say that they are familiar to the mind, is to 
suppose the child already able to read. Now, as 
reading aloud is nothing less than translating 
written into audible signs, a knowledge of the latter, 
whatever may be the system of teaching, is pre- 
supposed to exist, and is about as necessarv to the 



THE EDUCATOR. 87 

one learning to read, as would be a knowledge of 
the English language to one who would translate 
Greek into English. 

"To illustrate. Take the printed word mother; 
when pronounced, it is familiar 'to the ear, the 
tongue, and the mind.' Does this familiarity aid 
the child in the least, in comprehending the 
printed picture? Can he, from his acquaintance 
with the audible sigu, utter that sign by looking 
upon the six unknown letters which spell it? 

"The truth is, in all that belongs, appropriately, 
to the question under consideration, the word is 
unknown; unknown as a whole, unknown in all its 
parts, and unknown as to the mode of combining 
those parts. The question, when restricted to its 
appropriate limits, is simply this; 'What is the 
best method of teaching a child to comprehend 
printed words?' " 

"Is the rose any the less agreeable to the mind 
of the child, or, is the word rose, when pronounced, 
any the less familiar to his organs of speech or to 
his ear, because its printed sign is learned by com- 
bining the letters r-o-s-e? Or does the mere act of 
telling the child to say rose, while pointing to the 
picture, formed of four unknown letters, in any 
way enhance its agreeableness? 

"The question, then, is not whether a child shall 
be 'introduced to a stranger through the medium 
of old acquaintances,' for, in fact, by the new 
system, this introduction is made through the 
medium of the teacher's voice. 

"The true question at issue is, whether the child 
shall be furnished with an attendant to announce 
the name of the stranger, or whether he shall be 
furnished with letters of introduction by which, un- 
attended, he may make the acquaintance, not of 
some seven hundred strangers merely, but of the 
whole seventy thousand unknown members of our 
populous vocabulary." 



gg HORACE 31 ANN, 

"When the secretary, in speaking of a child 
after the first year of his life, says that, then, 'the 
wonderful faculty of language begins to develop 
itself,' he undoubtedly refers to spoken language. 
And well may that be called a wonderful faculty 
by which, through the agency of the vocal organs, 
we can so modify mere sounds, as to send them 
forth freighted with thoughts which may cause 
the hearts of others to thrill with ecstatic delight, 
or throb with unutterable anguish. And no 
wonder that there should have existed, early in 
the history of the world, a desire to enchain and 
represent to the eye these evanescent messengers 
of thought. Hence the early and rude attempts 
at writing, by means of pictures and symbols. 
But these, unfortunately, were representatives of 
the message, not the messenger; of the idea, not the 
sound which conveys it. At length arose that 
wonderful invention, the art of representing to the 
eye, by means of letters, the component parts of a 
spoken word, so that now, not merely the errand, 
but the bearer stands pictured before us. The 
grand and distinctive feature of this invention is, 
that it establishes a connection between the 
written and the audible signs of our ideas. It 
throws, as it were, a bridge across the otherwise 
impassable gulf which must ever have separated 
the one from the other. The hieroglyphics and 
symbols of the ancients performed but one func- 
tion. To those who, by a purely arbitrary asso- 
ciation, were able to pass from the sign to the 
thing signified, they were representatives of 
ideas — and ideas merely; hence they are called 
ideographic characters, and that mode of writing 
has been denominated the symbolic, and is exem- 
plified in the Chinese language." 

"The new system of teaching reading abandons 
entirely the distinctive feature of the phonetic 
mode of writing, and our w T ords are treated as 



THE EDUCATOR. 89 

though they were capable of performing but one 
function, that of representing ideas. The lan- 
guage, although written with alphabetic char- 
acters, becomes, to all intents and purposes, a 
symbolic language. Now we say, as ours is 
designedly a phonetic language, no system of 
teaching ought to meet with public favor, that 
strips it of its principal power. And we confess 
ourselves not a little surprised that the secretary, 
who cherishes such correct views of the inferiority 
of the Chinese language, should urge us to con- 
vert ours into Chinese." 

"As our language was written with alphabetic 
characters, our words are too long and cumbrous 
for becoming mere symbols. A single character 
would be vastly superior to our trisyllables and 
polysyllables. If the new system prevails, we may 
soon expect a demand for reform in this respect. 
As it now is, the child must meet with all the 
difficulties that necessarily accompany the ac- 
quisition of the Chinese language, and these 
greatly increased by the forms of our words. 

"The defenders of the new system seem to lose 
sight of the nature and design of the alphabetic 
mode of writing, as an invention. To understand 
an invention, we must first know the law of nature 
which gave rise to it, and then the several parts 
of the invented system, as well as the adaptation 
of these parts, when combined, to accomplish 
some useful purpose. Thus, to explain the steam- 
engine, the chemical law by which water is con- 
verted into steam must first be understood, and in 
connection with it, that of elasticity, common to 
all aeriform bodies. Then follows — what consti- 
tutes the main point in this illustration — the ex- 
planation of the several parts of the machine, with 
the modes of combining them, so as to gain that 
immense power, which is found so valuable in the 
arts. Take another illustration, more nearly 



90 



HORACE MANN, 



allied to the subject under consideration. It was 
discovered a few years since, that a piece of iron 
exposed, under given circumstances, to a galvanic 
current, would become a powerful magnet, and 
that it would cease to be such, the instant the 
current was intercepted. Little was it then 
thought, that this simple discovery would give 
rise to an invention by which the winged light- 
ning, fit messenger of thought, could be employed 
to enable the inhabitants of Maine to converse 
with their otherwise distant neighbors in Louis- 
iana, with almost as much ease, as though the 
parties were seated in the same parlor. 

"Now, no one will pretend, that to make use of 
the steam-engine successfully, all that is neces- 
sary is to gain an idea of it, as a whole. The 
several parts, with their various relations and 
combinations, must be explained. Equally neces- 
sary is it, in managing the magnetic telegraph, for 
the operator to be familiar with the laws of elec- 
tricity, and the adaptation of the several parts of 
the machine, to accomplish, by means of that 
agent, the object proposed. But who would 
think of interpreting the results of its operation, 
the dots, the lines, the spaces, by looking upon 
them as constituting a single picture? 

"To apply these illustrations. It was discov- 
ered, ages ago, that Nature had endowed the 
organs of speech with the power of uttering a 
limited number of simple sounds. From this dis- 
covery originated the invention of letters to repre- 
sent these elementary sounds. Letters constitute 
the machinery of the invention. They are the tools 
by which the art of reading is to be acquired; and 
a thorough knowledge of letters bears the same 
relation to reading, as does the thorough acquaint- 
ance with the parts of a steam-engine, or of the 
magnetic telegraph to a skilful use of these instru- 
ments. The new system proposes to abandon, for 



THE EDUCATOR. yi 

a time at least, all that is peculiar to this inven- 
tion; all that distinguishes it from the rude and 
unphilosophical systems of symbolic writing, 
which, centuries ago, gave place to it, throughout 
every portion of the civilized world. Now, since 
such an estimate was placed upon this invention by 
the ancients, as to secure its adoption to the exclu- 
sion of all other methods of writing; and since a 
trial of many centuries has served only to confirm 
mankind in the belief of its superiority over every 
other system; we can but protest against the 
adoption of a mode of teaching, that subjects the 
child to such inconvenience and loss." 

"The word letter, as applied to the alphabet, is 
ambiguous, unless accompanied by some term, or 
explanatory phrase, to show what is intended. 
In referring to one of the elementary sounds 
which enters into the formation of a spoken word, 
we call that sound a letter; so, in speaking of the 
conventional sign, which represents that sound to 
the eye, as the character h, seen in a printed word, 
that sign we call a letter ; both the sound and the 
sign, take the name aitch, for example ; this name, in 
turn, is called a letter. Now, to prevent confu- 
sion, these three things, the power, the character, 
and the name, should be kept entirely distinct 
from each other. In a spoken word, elementary 
sounds are combined; in a zvritten word, elemen- 
tary characters; in neither written nor spoken 
words, are the names of letters joined, except in 
those instances, where the name and power are 
the same, as in the case of the long sounds of the 
vowels." 

"We never supposed, nor do we know of a single 
advocate of the old system, who ever supposed, 
that the names of letters entered into the forma- 
tion of words ; as, h-a-t, into aitchaitee; 'leg,' into 
'elegy.' 

"Names were not given to letters for such a pur- 



92 BORAGE MANN, 

pose. They were assigned to them, for the same 
reason that names are given to other objects, to 
aid us in referring to the objects themselves. One 
would scarcely expect to convince even a child, 
that there was neither pastry, fruit, cinnamon, 
nor sugar, in the pie he was eating, by telling him 
that pies are never made of such names as pastry, 
cinnamon, etc." 

"To neglect the names of letters is to destroy, 
at once, one of the most important exercises of the 
primary school; that is, oral spelling. That let- 
ters must have names to aid us in referring to 
them, no one will deny." 

"If letters must have names, why should the 
child be kept in ignorance of them? One of the 
first inquiries of a child, on seeing a new object is, 
'What is it?' 'What do you call it?' or, in other 
words, 'What is its name?' Shall such inquiries 
be silenced, when made respecting the alphabet?" 

"Mr. Mann says: 'If b, is be, then be is bee, the 
name of an insect; and if / is el, then el is eel, the 
name of a fish;' that is to say, if the object named, 
is the same as the name itself, then that name be- 
comes the name of an insect, or of a fish. Sur- 
prising! 

"All printed names of objects are formed from 
printer's ink. Bee is the printed name of an 
object; and since the object itself is the same as 
its name, it follows that this insect is only 
printer's ink. It is, therefore, harmless, unless it 
is that remarkable bee that has three stings; for 
we are told that — 

" 'No bee has two stings;' and that, 'one bee has 
one more sting than no bee (and perhaps, this one) 
has three stings. 

"As for the eel, fit emblem of the logic that 
caught it, we will leave it to hands best able to 
retain it." 

"Since the child cannot 'appreciate the remote 



THE EDUCATOR. 93 

benefits' of learning the alphabet, must his caprice 
govern those who can, and determine them to 
abandon, even for a time, what they know is all- 
important in teaching him to read? A child is 
sick, and cannot appreciate the remote, or imme- 
diate benefits of taking disagreeable medicine. 
Will a judicious parent, who is fully sensible of 
the child's danger, regard, for one moment, his 
wishes, to save him from a little temporary dis- 
quietude? A child has no fondness for the dry 
and uninteresting tables of arithmetic. Shall he, 
therefor^, be gratified in his desire to hasten on 
to the solution of questions, before acquiring such 
indispensable pre-requisites? We have been 
accustomed to suppose that the responsibilities 
of the teacher's profession, consist, mainly, in his 
being required to fashion the manners and tastes 
of his pupils, to promote habits of thinking and 
patient toil, and to give direction to their desires 
and aspirations, rather than to minister to the 
gratification of their passion for pleasure." 

"To gratify the child, should not be the teacher's 
aim, but rather to lay a permanent foundation, on 
which to rear a noble and well-proportioned super- 
structure. If, while doing this, the teacher is suc- 
cessful in rendering mental exertion agreeable, 
and in leading the child from one conquest to 
another, till achievement itself affords delight, it is 
well ; such pleasure stimulates to greater exertion. 
But if, to cultivate pleasure-seeking is his aim, he 
had better, at once, abandon his profession, and 
obtain an employment in which he will not en- 
danger the welfare, both of individuals and 
society, by sending forth a sickly race, palsied in 
every limb, through idleness, a vain attempt 
to gratify a morbid thirst for pleasure. 

"The new system proposes to afford the child 
pleasure in the exercise of reading words; yet, in- 
stead of requiring him to exert, in the least, his 



94 HORACE 31 ANN, 

mental faculties, in combining the elementary 
parts of these words, the teacher gives merely the 
result of his own mental processes, and exacts 
nothing from the child, but a passive reception of 
the sound, which is to be associated arbitrarily, 
with the visible picture, pointed out to him." 

"To this method of teaching we are opposed, for 
the following reasons: 

1st. — "Teaching whole words according to this 
plan, to any extent whatever, gives the child no 
facility for learning new ones. Every word must 
be taken upon authority, until the alphabet is 
learned. 

2d. — "Since the alphabet must, at some period, 
be acquired, with all its imperfections, it is but a 
poor relief, to compel the child, at first, to asso- 
ciate seven hundred different, arbitrary forms 
with the ideas which they represent, and then to 
learn the alphabet itself." 

3d. — "Another objection to converting our 
language into Chinese, arises from the change 
which must inevitably take place in the modes of 
associating the printed word with the idea which 
it represents, when the child is taught to regard 
words as composed of elements. Children, at 
first, learn to recognize the word, by the new 
method, as a single picture, not as composed of 
parts; and for aught we know, they begin in the 
middle of it and examine each way. It is not 
probable that they proceed invariably from left 
to right, as in the old mode. However that may 
be, an entire change must take place when they 
begin to learn words,, as composed of letters. 
The attention, then, is directed to the parts of 
which words are composed. While the eye. is 
employed in combining the visible characters, the 
mind unites the powers which they represent, and 
the organs of speech are prompt to execute what 
the eye and the mind have simultaneously pre- 



TEE EDUCATOR. 95 

pared for them. The mode of association in a 
symbolic language, if we mistake not, is this : The 
single picture is associated arbitrarily, yet 
directly, with the idea; the idea is then associated 
with its audible sign; this sign, being familiar to 
the child, is readily uttered. In a phonetic lan- 
guage, it is different. The attention being 
directed to the letters and their powers, the child 
is conducted immediately to the audible sign; this 
when uttered, or thought of, suggests the idea. 
Whether or not these are the correct views, is 
immaterial to the argument. All that is claimed 
is, that a change takes place in the modes of asso- 
ciation, as soon as the child begins to combine 
letters into words. It is of this change we com- 
plain. All will acknowledge the importance of 
forming in the child, correct habits of association, 
such as will not need revolutionizing at a subse- 
quent period in life." 

4th. — "The new system fails to accomplish the 
object which it proposes. The main design of 
this mode of teaching seems to be, to escape the 
ambiguity arising from the variety of sounds 
which attach to some of the letters, as well as 
from the variety of forms by which the same 
sounds may be represented. 

"The defenders of this system seem to forget, 
since these anomalies are elementary, that they 
must be carried into the formation of words. 
Thus, we can represent a single elementary sound, 
first by a, then by ai, and again, by ei; hence, we 
can form three different words ; as vane, vain, vein. 
In a similar manner we have, rain, reign, rein; 
wright, zvrite, right, rite; and hundreds of others. 
It will be seen at once, that it must be as difficult 
for a child to attach the same sound to four differ- 
ent pictures called words, as to four different pic- 
tures called letters. Hence, it is plain, that we 
have 'harlequins among words; as zvell as among 



96 



HORACE MANN, 



letters. The only difference is, that the former are 
more numerous, yet the legitimate offspring of the 
latter. We have miasqueraders,' too, among 
words. Let the sound represented by the four 
letters, r-i-t-e, fall upon the child's ear, and he may 
think, either, of a ceremony, of making letters 
with a pen, of justice, or of a workman. Again, 
let either the printed or spoken word pound, for 
example, be given; and he may think of an en- 
closure for stray cattle, of striking a blow, of cer- 
tain weights, as avoirdupois, apothecaries', or 
Troy weight, and also, of a denomination of 
money." 

5th. — "It introduces confusion into the different 
grades of schools. 

"The elements must be taught somewhere. If 
neglected in the primary schools, they must be 
taught in the grammar schools. And thus the 
order of things is reversed, and disarrangement 
introduced into the whole school system. The 
teacher who is employed, and paid, for instructing 
in the higher branches, is compelled to devote 
time and attention to the studies appropriately 
belonging to the schools of a lower grade." 
- "Two children, in like circumstances, in every 
respect, commence learning to read; the first 
learns some seven hundred different words, as he 
would so many different letters; having acquired 
no more ability to learn the seven hundred and 
first, than he had at the beginning ; afterwards he 
learns the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, in- 
cluding all the 'harlequins' and 'masqueraders,' 
and finally the art of combining the letters into 
words. The other learns first, the letters; then, 
the art of combining them; and finally makes use 
of this knowledge, to acquire. his seven hundred 
words. Now by what rule of arithmetic, or of 
common sense, it is ascertained that the former 
will advance more rapidly than the latter, is to us 
entirelv unknown." 



THE EDUCATOR. 97 

"The main question at issue, we are constrained 
to answer in the negative. The arguments ab- 
duced in its support are, as we believe, incon- 
clusive. The plausibility of some arises from 
considerations wholly irrelevant ; others are falla- 
cious; and others still, are based upon false 
premises. 

"On the contrary, the -reasons brought against 
the change, and in favor of the prevailing system, 
are of paramount importance. Therefore, as con- 
scientious and faithful servants in the cause of 
education, we feel bound to adhere to the path of 
duty, rather than yield to the opinions even of 
those who are high in authority." 

The "Reply" of Mr. Mann deals with the ques- 
tion in this way: — 

"There are several reasons why I shall not at- 
tempt a lengthened reply to this part of the 'Re- 
marks.' The first is, that, from beginning to end, 
it is an arrant misrepresentation of the system it 
professes to impugn. I have never advocated, or 
known, or heard of, nor have I met any person 
who has ever advocated, or known, or heard of, 
any such mode of teaching the English language 
to children, as the 'Remarks' assail." 

"It would be useless to consider, in detail, those 
arguments which are brought to overthrow a sys- 
tem which nobody upholds. Besides, the plain, 
common-sense views which belong to this subject, 
are turned into metaphysics, by the 'Remarks,' 
and treated with division and subdivision, that 
bewilder instead of elucidating. The subject is 
ground down, and pulverized into impalpability, 
—beyond microscopic vision. Had it been the un- 
aided production of a single mind, the subtlety 
and evanescence of its refinements might have 
been less; — now, I know not how otherwise to 
describe it than as the doctrine of metaphysics 
applied to the almost endless anomalies of the 



98 HORACE MANN, 

alphabet. An attempt to individualize the 
atomical parts of this section, and to give an 
answer to each, would be like attempting to beat 
back a league-square of sea-fog, by hitting each 
particle with the sharpened end of a rod. I shall 
content myself, therefore, with endeavoring to 
find some nuclei rarified into less metaphysical 
tenuity than the general mass, and striking at 
them." 

"By the 'old method,' the names of the letters, — 
the A, B, C, as they have been immemorially 
called, — were first taught. After these letters, 
came tables of ab and eb, of bla and ble, of ska, 
ske, of bam, flam, etc., etc., an almost endless cata- 
logue, and doleful as endless." 

"By the 'old system/ when the child could 
master the alphabet at sight, and could read these 
names of nothing, by spelling them, he was put to 
the reading of short sentences. Then, and not till 
then, was any order or beauty evolved to his 
vision, out of night and chaos. From inquiries 
made, I know not of how many teachers, I learn 
that it has taken children, on an average, at least 
six months to master the alphabet, on this plan, 
even when they went to school constantly. In 
country districts, where there are short schools 
and long vacations, it has generally required a 
year, and often eighteen months, to teach a child 
the twenty-six letters of the alphabet; when the 
same child would have learned the names of 
twenty-six playmates, or of twenty-six interesting 
objects of any kind, in one or two days. And the 
reason is obvious. In learning the meaningless 
letters of the alphabet, there was nothing to at- 
tract his attention, to excite his curiosity, to de- 
light his mind, or to reward his efforts. The life, 
the zest, the eagerness with which all children, ex- 
cept natural-born idiots, seek for real objects, ask 
their names, or catch them without asking, never 



TEE EDUCATOR. 99 

enlivened this process. The times of the lessons 
were seasons of suspended animation. The child 
was taught not to think. His eyes and mind were 
directed to objects as little interesting as so many 
grains of sand. For the time being, he was 
banished from this world into the realms of 
vacuity. By the letters and abs, no glimmer of an 
idea was excited in the child's mind, and when he 
was put into words and short sentences, he found, 
as the general rule, that the letters had all 
changed their names, without any act of the 
Legislature. Were the common objects of na- 
ture or of art, — animals, trees, flowers, fruits, 
articles of furniture and of dress, implements of 
trade, etc., etc., learned as slowly as this, an indi- 
vidual would hardly be able to name the objects 
immediately around him during the first century 
of his existence; and antediluvian longevity would 
find him inquiring the names of things now 
familiar to a child. But all who have arrived at 
middle life, and been educated in this community, 
know bitterly what the 'old method' means. 

"By the 'new method,' a book is used which con- 
tains, short, familiar words, which are the names 
of pleasant objects or qualities, or suggest the 
idea of agreeable actions. A simple story is told, 
or some inquiry is made, in which a particular 
word is used, and when the child's attention is 
gained and his interest excited, the word is shown 
to him, as a whole. He is made to speak it, and is 
told that the written or printed object means 
what we mean when we speak the word ; and that 
if he will learn words, he can read such stories in 
books as he has heard, or speak to people a hun- 
dred miles distant from him, or that he can do 
some other of the hundred wonderful things 
which belong to reading, and which even a child 
can be made to understand. Words are shown, 
which excite pleasant images when spoken, and 



100 HORACE MANN, 

after a little while, if the instruction is judiciously 
managed, the child comes to look upon a book as 
a magic casket, full of varied and beautiful treas- 
ures, which he longs to see. Pleasant associa- 
tions with the book, the school, and the teacher, 
are created. The idea that every word has a sig- 
nification is kept perpetually before his mind, 
until he looks habitually for a meaning in printed 
words, as much as he does in those spoken ones, 
which are addressed to him. His mind is kept in 
an active, thinking state. The time never is, 
when he looks at the words in a book without 
going out, in imagination, to things, actions, or 
relations, beyond the book. He is not stultified 
as he is when compelled to look at letters and 
particles, for a year, which are almost nothing in 
themselves and suggest nothing beyond them- 
selves. After a number of words have been 
taught in this way, — more or less, according to 
the capacities of the child, but ordinarily, I should 
say, less than a hundred, — some of the letters are 
pointed out. In subsequent lessons the attention 
is turned more and more to the letters, until all 
are learned." 

There is no occasion to quote from the forty 
pages devoted to this subject in the "Rejoinder of 
the Masters, 1 ' nor from the almost equal space 
given to it in the "Answer" of Mr. Mann. It now 
becomes little more than a personal quarrel be- 
tween the two forces as to which has outraged and 
misrepresented the other most brutally or skill- 
fully, as you please, and with that we have no con- 
cern. The three presentations here made show 
the relative positions of the contestants. In this 
phase of the discussion, Mr. Mann is at his best 
and the masters are at their worst and it is due 
Mr. Mann, in a study of his life, that the section 
chosen should be that in which he appears to 
advantage. It has been said with much plainness 



THE EDUCATOR. 1Q1 

in these pages that he was not creditably repre- 
sented in the personal issues raised; it is only fair 
that the professional side be presented, for in that 
he had every advantage. 

Time has placed him upon the educational 
throne. In the grounds in front of the State 
House stand two statues — one of Daniel Webster 
and the other of Horace Mann, the only person 
in Massachusetts whose antagonism in speech and 
politics led to Mr. Webster's thorough discomfiture. 
Their differences are forgotten, and admirers of 
the statesman-orator and of the statesman-edu- 
cator honor them equally. Mr. Mann's statue is 
in the most commanding spot in the city of Boston 
where his fame is at its height and the Boston 
masters of half a century have been rearing im- 
mortal monuments to the wisdom and devotion 
of the greatest educator of his time. Nowhere 
are his praises sung more spiritedly in this 
memorial year than by the schools in which chil- 
dren are ennobled and inspired intellectually and 
morally by the Boston masters and their corps of 
assistants. As the statues of Webster and Mann 
stand side by side, placed there by the same au- 
thorities, admirers of both, so the Boston schools 
of to-day are monuments to Mr. Mann and the 
masters who are alike respected for their service. 
The men of Massachusetts in this hour of her 
commercial, educational and civic grandeur are 
the "next generation," 

THE CLIENTS OF HORACE MANN. 



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